Random Spatter of Six Months of Election Thoughts

My favorite political quote of all time. When Adlai Stevenson was running for president against Eisenhower, a supporter said to him: “Every thinking person in America will be voting for you.” Stevenson replied, “I’m afraid that won’t do — I need a majority.”

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Bill Maher- "You think you're living in the Second Great Depression because you can't buy a full foot of sandwich for $5?"

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One of my favorite comments this whole election cycle... someone said, "It's not about who wins, just so long as both candidates are having fun and making friends. That's what all of this is really about. ♥"

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Trump was convicted of sexual abuse since leaving the presidency, famously admitted to sexual abuse on tape, and when asked about it in a deposition had this to say: 

KAPLAN: And you say – and again this has become very famous – in this video, ‘“I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p*ssy. You can do anything.” That’s what you said. Correct?

TRUMP: Well, historically, that’s true with stars.

KAPLAN: It’s true with stars that they can grab women by the p*ssy?

TRUMP: Well, that’s what, if you look over the last million years I guess that’s been largely true. Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.

KAPLAN: And you consider yourself to be a star?

TRUMP: I think you can say that. Yeah.

Unfortunately or fortunately? Maybe this should inform our decision on whether to vote for him or his opponent? 

Remember too that one accused, he said that she's not his type. It seems that worthy that he didn't say that he wouldn't abuse her, he just said that she wasn't his type.

Protector of women, huh? 

https://youtu.be/0E4GnMcSycU

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Timothy Snyder- "Modern authoritarians such as Vladimir Putin have much to say about why they must remain in power, but the real issue is that they wish to die wealthy and in their own beds rather than poor and in prison."

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Trump: very conceited, never conceded.

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Conservative author, Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic- Trump is Speaking like Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin 

(She wrote this just before Milley and Kelly spoke of Trump's fascist tendencies.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-authoritarian-rhetoric-hitler-mussolini/680296/

"These are not jokes, and Trump is not laughing. Nor are the people around him. Delegates at the Republican National Convention held up prefabricated signs: Mass Deportation Now. Just this week, when Trump was swaying to music at a surreal rally, he did so in front of a huge slogan: Trump Was Right About Everything. This is language borrowed directly from Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist. Soon after the rally, the scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat posted a photograph of a building in Mussolini’s Italy displaying his slogan: Mussolini Is Always Right.

"These phrases have not been put on posters and banners at random in the final weeks of an American election season. With less than three weeks left to go, most candidates would be fighting for the middle ground, for the swing voters. Trump is doing the exact opposite. Why? There can be only one answer: because he and his campaign team believe that by using the tactics of the 1930s, they can win. The deliberate dehumanization of whole groups of people; the references to police, to violence, to the “bloodbath” that Trump has said will unfold if he doesn’t win; the cultivation of hatred not only against immigrants but also against political opponents—none of this has been used successfully in modern American politics."

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Bill Maher- "Our economy is bigger and better than ever. It makes Arnold Palmer's dick look like nothing."

(Sorry, haha.)

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Timothy Snyder- "It's your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. The individual who investigates, is also the citizen who builds. The leader who dislikes the investigators, is a potential tyrant."

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James Madison said that "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." He hoped, "that people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom." If not, he warned, "we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks- no form of government can render us secure."

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Tim Miller, Bulwark- "Will the institutions hold in the event of a Trump win? Even if there's a 2% chance they won't, and Trump becomes a full-on authoritarian, that alone is worth a vote for Kamala Harris, and then have another election in 4 years."

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Peter Wehner, The Atlantic- "Trump remains a far more fundamental threat to conservatism than Harris. Trump has, in a way no Democrat ever could, changed the GOP from within and broken with the most important tenets of conservatism. That’s no surprise, because his desire isn’t to conserve; it is to burn things to the ground."

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Remember when Senator Stevens from Alaska described the internet as a series of tubes? I get the same feeling when Trump says "the AI."

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Timothy Snyder- "Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights."

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Andrew Yang- "I kind of enjoy having a President I can forget about for a few days at a time."

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One thing that differentiates the campaigns- not too many Kamala supports wearing Kamala flags as capes.

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George W. Bush, after Trump's inauguration address- "That was some weird shit."

George W. Bush, on January 6th- "This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic."

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Progressophobia- Steven Pinker's word for us being afraid to admit that everything is pretty good. Tragedies grab headlines, but there has been across the board improvement on a whole host of issues.

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The Economist- "An economy with an unemployment rate of 4% and a per person GDP of $85,000 does not have to be made great again; it is great!"

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Bill Maher- "The phrase I hear so much that it just makes me want to unalive myself, is "How is she going to help me?" As if the president is your personal genie. It's Kamala, not Kazaam."

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Mississippi has the poorest people, and they're all richer than the average Brit, Canadian, or German.

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Seriously, how many years have I been posting that Voltaire quote? "Someone who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."

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Biden's "garbage" gaffe illustrated Trump's classic Bed of Nails Effect. Trump vilifies the other side all day, everyday, over and over, and it doesn't even register. Biden misspeaks (as he's prone to do!), clarifies immediately, and people act like he wasn't condemning the racist commentary. EVEN IF Biden meant it how it came out, how would it compare to Trump's 10,000 hateful comments where he doubles-down versus walking back? 

Take a step back. Is Biden running for president? I get it though, I really do. It's a rallying cry. It's a manufactured rallying cry, but a rallying crying nevertheless.

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PT Barnum said you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Trump's problem is that he can't live with that fact, and he's ready to go to war over it. He needs to fool at least enough people to keep himself out of jail. Thankfully he has yet to fool half of the people.

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Did you ever notice how poor of a speaker Trump is with the droning, droning, droning. The last time that a so-called "charismatic" speaker droned on like this was Jonestown.

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Trump is set to be not just bad, but catastrophic for the economy. Timothy Snyder outlined how he could destabilize things.

He wants to go after people because of who they are, his opponents. So he wants to weaponize the law, to go after selective people personally, which is persecution. 

He wants to fire all the civil servants, which will then be replaced by loyalists that don't even know how to do their jobs. 

He wants to round up 12 million people, which will devastate the sectors of the economy in which they work. For instance, food prices will skyrocket. 

This all leads to destabilization which will ruin the economy. 

The economy depends on "rules of the game." If you want a social security check, or you want the banks regulated (vs having them crash like in 2008), or you want to rules of the stock market enforced, then we need to play fairly. Expect a massive stock market crash when people believe that these rules are no longer fair.

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Colin Powell- "I don't want to hear about lazy immigrants from a race of people who enslaved a whole other race of people to do the work they didn't want to do."

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Thomas Hobbes- "Hell is truth seen too late."

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David Brooks in The Atlantic- "Red World suffers today from an unfortunate combination of a spiritual-superiority complex and an intellectual-inferiority complex. It’s not intellectually self-confident enough to argue with itself; absent this self-scrutiny, it’s susceptible to demagogues who tell it what to think. Blue World is now home to a greater tradition of and respect for debate. Despite what I said earlier about the rigid orthodoxy of the progressive aristocracy, the party is bigger than that, and for every Blue World person who practices identity politics, there is another who criticizes it. For every Blue World person who succumbs to the culture of narcissism, another argues that it’s shallow and destructive. For every Blue World person who thinks we should have universal basic income, another adduces evidence suggesting that the UBI saps people’s incentives to work and steers them toward playing video games on the couch.

"In Blue World, I find plenty of people who are fighting against all the things I don’t like about Blue World. In Red World, however, far fewer people are fighting against what’s gone wrong with the party. (There’s a doughty band of Never Trump Republicans, but they get no hearing inside today’s GOP.) A culture or organization is only as strong as its capacity to correct its mistakes."

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49% of us think that Trump is a fascist, and 8% of THOSE people said they will vote for him anyway!

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Ryan Teague Beckwith- "There's nothing sadder than a salesman trying to close one last deal."

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Kamala opening up a rally with a winning nuance to her pro-choice argument, after a montage of people talking about how they nearly died because of Texas's abortion ban, even for rape and incest... the argument is that MEN don't want Trump's abortion ban, and have their wives and daughters denied the healthcare they need.

Here was a winning line:

Kamala, in Houston- "And now, the attorney General of Texas, is suing the United States government, so that Texas prosecutors can get, check this out, so that Texas prosecutors can get their hands on private medical records of women who leave the state to get care. Now I ask everyone here, please do see the irony, okay, listen to this, on the one hand, Donald Trump won't see let anyone see his medical records, I gave up mine, and on the other hand they want to get their hands on YOUR medical records. Simply put, they are out of their minds!"

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Al Sharpton said that Trump has a battered wife themed campaign... "You're lucky you are with me, you're nothing without me."

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Trump, 2018- "Just remember, what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."

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Van Jones- "He gets to be lawless, but she has to be flawless."

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For anyone who thinks it's unfair for the generals who worked the most closely with him to say that in their experience Trump would rule as a fascist, do they think it's okay for him to run his campaign as an authoritarian, threatening to use the military to lock up his political rivals, along with countless other examples?

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John Bolton said that the Charles Krauthammer, the conservative columnist, said that he used to think Trump was an 11 year old, but realized his estimation was off by 10 years, he acts like a one-year-old who sees the entire world as, "Does this benefit me?"

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Hey Trump, do you know what, maybe on the night that all the news is buzzing with the fact that your chief of staff put on the record your admiration of Hitler, perhaps don't turn to the worst dictator on the planet, in an appeal to authority on his thoughts on previous presidents. 

Lawrence O'Donnell- "Another Trump alignment with dictators, the worst dictator on the planet, Kim Jong-un, a cruel, mass murderer of his own people, Donald Trump said tonight, "Kim Jong-un didn't respect Obama, he thought Obama was a real jerk, and I think he's a real jerk." So that's what Donald Trump has to say about the worst, cruelest dictator on the face of the Earth."

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Timothy Snyder- "I mean the sad thing about Trump is that he wants to be a strong man in the sense of repressing Americans, making our government fail, and then turning politics into a struggle of some Americans against others, but with respect to the rest of the world he wants to be a weak man, to be the little guy admiring all of the other dictators. He doesn't have any sense that American power can arise from American righteousness. He has no sense that the rule of law is actually a source of power. He has no sense that decency matters in the world, and so for him the worst people are the most powerful people, so what Trump promises is an America which not only does wrong, but which is simultaneously much weaker than it has to be."

Is this real life? 

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Carville- "Do you not like the price of eggs, or do you like the Constitution?"

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Marsha Coates was the wife of Trump's Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coates, said this one he ran in 2016, "Trump is so controversial, he's the type of person who would inspire crazy people."

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Trump and his genius tariff-based economic plan. One can imagine him thinking, "Hey I know, how about if we just make every other country pay our taxes by raising tariffs?" Genius. Wonder why nobody ever thought of it? Because it's nonsense. 

To take one example, in 2018 he put tariffs on washing machines from China, so Best Buy had to pay more in order to buy them, and they passed the extra expense on to the customers. 

Some customers chose to buy American washing machines instead, and economists agreed that after a while it did increase United States factory jobs. 

Only one problem though. This one example had a cost of $1.5 billion, which translated into, you guessed it... $800,000 in extra consumer cost per job it created.

That analysis doesn't count any retaliatory tariffs that other countries put back on American products.

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It's hypothesized that one of the key reasons for The Long Peace, the stretch of time from World War II until modern day when they were no wars for land between superpowers, was thanks to the interdependence on trade relations. It's almost a joke in foreign policy circles that no two countries with a McDonald's have ever gone to war. Breakdowns in trade would potentially be too costly, and not worth a war. An isolationist "America Only" makes the world a more dangerous place.

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John Kelly- "He was always telling me that we need to use the FBI and IRS to go after people- it was constant and obsessive."

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Trump is running as an extremist where Kamala is running as a centrist. She wants to win and run again in 2028, so she can be held to her centrism. Her coalition includes moderate Republicans.

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Will all precincts confirm their votes? I don't think so. There are 176,000 precincts. But I do think the system will work and courts will force them to confirm the votes.

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In his book, Rage, Bob Woodward wrote that before he was offered the job of Defense Secretary, Trump wanted to ask Mattis some questions. He wanted to make the point that NATO is obsolete, and that we should reinstitute torture. Mattis disagreed with Trump on both counts. He said that if NATO didn't exist, we'd have to invent it, and that torture results in bad information.

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Alexis de Tocqueville- "The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults."

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Timothy Snyder- “Without truth, we don’t have trust. Without trust, we don’t have the rule of law. Without the rule of law, we don’t have democracy”

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Sam Harris asked Yuval Noah Harari why we have to win in Ukraine. I didn't know this but going back to ancient times until the middle of the 20th century half of every civilization's tax money went to the military. We've had a long relative peace since World War II. There have been wars, but we don't try to annex territory. That has allowed us to drop our military budgets so that the first time ever, countries spend more on health care than they do on the military. If more money must get shifted to the military, we will be less healthy.

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Trump- "I bring rage out. I do bring rage out. I always have... I don't know if that's an asset or a liability, but whatever it is, I do. I also bring great unity out, ultimately. I've had many occasions like this, where people have hated me more than any human being they've ever met. And after it's all over, they end up being my friends. And I see that happening here."

He doesn't know if it's an asset or a liability, huh?

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Dan Rather - "Stay steady."

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A funny thing about Trump is that he calls Kamala "stupid," and he calls her "dumb," the same as he did for Biden, but he knows that if he just keeps calling her basic things like "stupid" and "dumb" he might be seen as stupid and dumb himself, so he switches it up once in a while and calls her, "a low IQ individual." Whoa, what a curveball! That's some highfalutin language! And how about that professorial tone? "A low

 IQ individual." Nine syllables. Wow. So smart!

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Socrates- "When the debate is lost, insults become the losers tool."

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On stability:

David Foster Wallace, This Is Water- "There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

We don't even recognize the fact that we're living in a stable society. 

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Upton Sinclair- “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” 

Also his freedom.

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At an October 16th rally, Trump was asked why he took so long to react on January 6th. He notably referred to the rioters as "we" and the Capitol police as "the others"... And he called it a "day of love." Trump is good on crime? January 6 is several orders of magnitude greater a crime than Watergate. 

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Mitch McConnell said after the 2020 election that then-President Trump was “stupid as well as being ill-tempered," a “despicable human being" and a “narcissist,” according to excerpts from a new biography of the Senate Republican leader.

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It's the craziest thing, if a headline is about Trump, it helps him, regardless of content. 

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Yuval Noah Harari said Republican party is the opposite of a conservative party, they don't want to conserve anything. They are a revolutionary party, they want to tear the system down and start from scratch

Conservative intellectual Russell Kirk- "Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light."

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Fareed Zakaria has said that Trump is not a good businessman, but he's a good salesman.

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Brad Pascal, Trump's campaign manager in 2020, finally told him that summer, that if the election was held then he would lose. Covid was being handled all wrong, his press conferences were hurting him. All true. Trump was so mad at him that he never invited him into the Oval Office again, and they phased him out of the campaign. Trump's version of the truth has to be a priority above all.

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Alan Marcus, PR, Trump Organization- "These are people that believe in him, and they believe in him because he says "I'm for you," and if you don't know him well, you believe that. You believe he cares."

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Bertrand Russell- "When you hate, you generate a reciprocal hate. When individuals hate each other, the harm is finite; but when great groups of nations hate each other, the harm may be infinite and absolute. Do not fall back upon the thought that those whom you hate deserve to be hated. I do not know whether anybody deserves to be hated, but I do know that hatred of those whom we believe to be evil is not what will redeem mankind."

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Before Trump was in politics one of his professors used to say that he was the stupidest student that he ever had. 

You be the judge as to whether Trump thinks that stealth fighters are actually invisible.

Mark Hamill said that, "Trump always sounds like a kid giving an oral report on a book he hasn’t read."

That's true on the surface but it would be a fun exercise to pick a Trump rally at random, pick a random part in the middle, and see what he's saying.

He seems to genuinely think that since thousands of people come to his rallies, he's guaranteed an electoral college victory. As if he can tell a difference between 91 million voting for Kamala and 89 million for him.

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Trump thinks that his economic plan is genius, even though a non-partisan group said that it will add $7 trillion to the budget versus Kamala's $3 trillion. 

Kamala wants to fund her plan by increasing taxes on the ones who can most afford it, reminiscent of Teddy Roosevelt's "square deal."

Trump plans to fund it by raising tariffs. Tariffs can work when they're targeted, but not when they're across the board.

I'm going to be the first to admit that I'm not the greatest economic mind of my generation. In fact, I resent the fact that I even need to think about it at all!

Trump thinks that he is indeed the greatest economic mind of his generation, but if we could simply raise our tax money by charging more to other countries, DON'T YOU THINK SOMEBODY WOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT BY NOW???

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Thought experiment for Trump supporters. There must be something that would get them to not support him. What's the the lightest thing he could do that would make someone drop support at this point? 

Maybe audio of him seeing that he doesn't care about the voters? Nah, they would probably just think that makes him honest! And Kamala is running that ad right now where he says, "I don't care about you, I just want your vote." 

Seriously though, I wonder what it would be. Killing someone on 5th avenue? Yeah right! He thought January 6th was justified, and people died there.

He's admitted to sexual assault on tape, so it would have to be worse than that. 

He said "so what," on January 6 when he found out that the mob wanted to kill Mike Pence, so it's got to be worse than that. 

Running out of possibilities here. 

Okay, I thought of one thing, and one thing only... No, I'm not going to write it down, I'm not going to say it out loud. Besides, his most faithful would think it was a forced confession or something, even if it was legit.

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Laura Ingraham tried to convince him that he's not going to go after his political enemies, and Shawn Hannity tried to convince him that he didn't really want to be a dictator on day one. He told them both no, he really meant it.

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Liz Cheney- "History teaches us again and again that democracies can fall. They fall to populists. They fall to strongmen, strongmen who beguile their fellow citizens with conspiracy theories and false emergencies. As my friend, the late Charles Krauthammer, taught us, the lesson of our history is that the task of merely maintaining strong and sturdy, the structures of our constitutional order is unending. It is the continuing and ceaseless work of every generation. And that responsibility now falls on all of us in this election."

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John Lewis- "My dear friends, your vote is precious. Sacred. It's the most powerful, non-violent tool we have to create a more perfect union."

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John Maynard Keynes comeback, when criticized for changing his mind, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” 

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Ephesians 4:29, “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.”

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Interesting that voters most important consideration is always the economy. And in the 2020 election, Republicans thought the economy was great when Trump was president, and immediately thought it was terrible when Biden became president. Ridiculous, right? Well Democrats thought the economy was terrible when Trump was president, and immediately better when Biden became president. It totally flipped, not according to any sort of actual measures of the economy, but because of how they felt. We're all backwards. Well, not us independents.

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When the Supreme Court gave Trump the powers of a king, they unwrittenly did the same thing to Joe Biden. That same day he should have appointed four more justices and overturned that ridiculous ruling. 

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Everybody forgets what Rudy Giuliani said in his warm-up speech on January 6th- "Let's have trial by combat!"

Gives a little bit more context to Trump's speech, as if any was needed. 

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Alyssa Farrah testified that after the election she walked in when Trump was watching Fox News and he said, "Can you believe I lost to this to this fucking guy?"

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The Arizona attorney general (I forget his name) said that there nothing he would have loved more than to prosecute a bunch of Democrats for cheating in the election. 

Russell Bowers, Secretary of State of Arizona, said that Giuliani told him he had names of illegal immigrants who voted, hundreds of thousands. Bowers knew it was nonsense and he asked if he had the list. Giuliani said he did, so Bowers said to bring it to him. When Giuliani showed up, he played stupid asked somebody else if they brought the list. Turns out nobody brought the list. Spoiler alert, the list was made up.

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Trump was asked if he trusts the election process this time around, and he shrugged and said that he'd let us know in 33 days. Nobody needs to guess what he means. He trusts it if he wins, and the whole thing was a sham if he loses. 

If somebody knows nothing about Trump other than that he refuses to commit to the peaceful transfer of power, and only believes in integrity of elections if he wins, you would think that would be enough for them to laugh him out of town.

But no... it's actually accepted by tens of millions.

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In a recent poll 18% thought that Trump was a criminal and would also vote for him. 

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Paul Begala said of James Carville and Mary Matalin that it's such a cliche they have such a famous mixed marriage, she's a Republican and he's a reptile.

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Trumpism- "We're seeing [X] at levels that nobody has ever seen before.” 

Always a lie.

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The bigger the tragedy, the greater Trump believes he his. Hamas attack on Israel, Putin's attacks on Ukraine... he's so great, it wouldn't have happened if he was president. That's how great he was. Tragedies just build him up.

A signpost of authoritarian leaders- magical thinking. "Wouldn't have happened if I was president." 

Putin wouldn't have invaded Ukraine??? Trump can't even say he wants Ukraine to win!

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Trump's policy talking points have the depth of, "They broke it and I alone can fix it." He never speaks substantively on anything.

More magical thinking.

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Did you notice how jubilant Trump was when the stock market briefly crashed yesterday? (I wrote this in the summer.)

CNN from January- Trump says he hopes any economic crash would happen before he could serve a possible second term.

Trump- “When there’s a crash, I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover. The one president – I just don’t want to be Herbert Hoover."

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How about Trump telling Milley, according to Esper, that they should shoot the protesters outside the White House in the legs. That's the same as he said they should shoot undocumented immigrants in the legs. He really does have a thing about shooting people in the legs.

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Trump called Kamala, "a radical left Marxist communist fascist."

Did he leave anything out?

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From a letter signed by 741 top national security leaders endorsing Harris:

"To the American People,

"We are former public servants who swore an oath to the Constitution. Many of us risked our lives for it. We are retired generals, admirals, senior noncommissioned officers, ambassadors, and senior civilian national security leaders. We are Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. We are loyal to the ideals of our nation—like freedom, democracy, and the rule of law—not to any one individual or party.

"We do not agree on everything, but we all adhere to two fundamental principles. First, we believe America’s national security requires a serious and capable Commander-in-Chief. Second, we believe American democracy is invaluable. Each generation has a responsibility to defend it. That is why we, the undersigned, proudly endorse Kamala Harris to be the next President of the United States.

"This election is a choice between serious leadership and vengeful impulsiveness. It is a choice between democracy and authoritarianism. Vice President Harris defends America’s democratic ideals, while former President Donald Trump endangers them.

"We do not make such an assessment lightly. We are trained to make sober, rational decisions. That is how we know Vice President Harris would make an excellent Commander-in-Chief, while Mr. Trump has proven he is not up to the job."

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Bizarre, Trump is 21% higher than Kamala on immigration, and 9% better on the economy. But being competent and effective Harris is up 5%. And she's up 20% on having the necessary mental and physical health to be president. Don't competency and mental health trump everything else, so to speak? 

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On inflation, if Kamala can somehow get the price of Doritos down from $5.50 to $3.25, she'll win. Maybe just use some of her billion dollars in donations to pay off Frito-Lay, haha.

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Can you believe that Kamala Harris's husband, Doug Emhoff was paid a quarter of a million dollars to speak at a campaign event and it's unclear who even paid him??? 

Of course you can't, and it's not true, but that's exactly what happened recently when Melania spoke at a Trump event. Seems like a not-so-clever way to launder your campaign donations right into your own pocket, doesn't it?

Join me again tomorrow on The Daily Trump News Item That Would Have Ended Any Other Politician's Career From Now Until Forever. (I'm still working on the name.)

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Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl- "What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again."

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Trump describing his sexual assault.

https://youtu.be/Syn5Z-w753o

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Trump finds out that Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala.

https://youtu.be/bpws74MsI9E

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NYT Opinion, Lydia Polgreen- Trump Has Crossed a Truly Unacceptable Line

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/opinion/trump-debate-haitians-pets.html

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In order to thrive, businesses need stable institutions. Trump's not one for stability.

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Kamala will talk about things that are unfair for others. Trump will talk about things that are unfair toward him. 

If you want to understand the psychological underpinnings, Trump was sent away by his parents to military school at 13 years for misbehaving, and since then the world is out to get him. So when he bankrupts casinos (casinos!) it's not a matter of his own incompetence, everything was rigged against him. 

She will talk about needing congress's help. He'll talk about doing it alone. 

I often think about Trump's parents sending him away. All of his campaigns have been a simultaneous effort to get people to love him, while simultaneously pushing them away. You can see this as a projection of him simultaneously loving and hating his parents. His online history proved that he's primarily motivated by hatred.

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Dick Cheney for Kamala???

"In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again. 

"As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris."

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Samuel Johnson- "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

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Emerson- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

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Trump on the 2020 election, "Lost by a whisker."

It's worth remembering that the 2020 election wasn't close.

Instead of losing by 74 electoral votes, I think Trump believed that he lost by 1 Mike Pence.

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Russia Today directly funding right-wing pro-Russia content.

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Some people think that a vote for Kamala would be good for the Republican party, given it a chance to rebuild itself without Trump versus being lost for the next generation.

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Donald Trump- "I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!!!" 

Yoda- "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you.”

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Explaining the chart that he said saved his life:

"This was the last week in office for me because of a horrible, horrible election where I got many millions more votes than I did the first time, but didn’t quite make it, just a little bit short."

As an aside, I thought that he thought that God saved his life, but I guess it was a chart.

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Something is coming on the horizon that will knock Harris down a peg. Trump is shielded by the bed-of-nails effect, but for her it'll be the one-nail effect and it will gain some traction.

Prepare yourself. Keep this list handy of all the nonsense of Trump's first term. It's... quite a list.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-atrocities-1-1-056

Pick something at random. As a fun exercise, check out what happened on this day in Trump presidential history.

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From Orwell's review of Mein Kampf:

"The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his photographs—and I recommend especially the photograph at the beginning of Hurst and Blackett’s edition, which shows Hitler in his early Brownshirt days. It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme."

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Does Trump want to win the election as much as he wants to allege that it was stolen after he lost? I honestly don't know. If I had to bet, I think I'd say that he prefers to be a victim. 

What am I thinking??? He needs to stay out of jail, of course he wants to win. But if he's in jail, he's a victim then too. 

Anyway you look at it, it's a win for Trump.

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On saying that he is better looking than Kamala...

Nothing to see here... just the daily thing that would have been the end of any other politician's career. (I was counting down the days until he would start this line of attack. It was inevitable. Carly Fiorina revisited.) This guy is stuck in a second grade level of morality. His chewed gum is probably still under the resolute desk. 

But beyond that, don't ever look how supremely stupid this man is, and how poor his judgment is. Battleground states are won or lost in the suburbs. Does he think this kind of crap is going to appeal to them?

He simultaneously pushes swing voters away and gives his loyal followers every reason to flip, effectively daring them to flip, all the while saying it's "not possible" for Harris to win. It's exactly as his ex-Chief of Staff, General Kelly said... that he's the most flawed person he's ever met.

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It's hard to believe that it's only 4 years since Trump had his postmaster General rip out the high volume mail sorting machines... you know, as a disproportionate number of Democrats were getting ready to vote by mail.

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The Hill- Veterans of Foreign Wars blasts Trump statement as ‘asinine’

“That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version,” Trump told attendees at an event at his Bedminister, N.J. club, attended by GOP mega donor Miriam Adelson, who was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 2018.

“It’s actually much better, because everyone who gets the congressional Medal of Honor, that’s soldiers, they’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead. She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman,” Trump said in reference to Adelson. “And they’re rated equal.”

Nothing to see here....only the daily Trump thing that would have ended any other politician's career. He thinks his donors who were awarded the Medal of Freedom made out much better than the dead of wounded Medal of Honor awardees. 

When the head of the VFW calls your comments "asinine," doesn't that disqualify you? This guy exposes his true morally bankrupt self every single day. On top of that, he doesn't understand concept of sacrifice. I guess that's why he was saying that Biden was going to come back at the convention and demand to be the nominee.

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David Frum:

"When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked. One of Trump’s sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.

"After authorities apprehended a right-wing-extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally. He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy. His supporters chanted “Lock her up.” Trump laughed and replied, “Lock them all up.”

"Fascism feasts on violence. In the years since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election—many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence—Trump has championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has vowed to pardon them if returned to office. His own staffers have testified to the glee with which Trump watched the mayhem on television.

"Now the bloodshed that Trump has done so much to incite against others has touched him as well. The attempted murder of Trump—and the killing of a person nearby—is a horror and an outrage. More will be learned about the man who committed this appalling act, and who was killed by the Secret Service. Whatever his mania or motive, the only important thing about him is the law-enforcement mistake that allowed him to bring a deadly weapon so close to a campaign event and gain a sight line of the presidential candidate. His name should otherwise be erased and forgotten."

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David Frum- "All decent people welcome the sparing of his life. Trump’s reckoning should be with the orderly process of law, not with the bloodshed he rejoiced in when it befell others. He and his allies will exploit a gunman’s vicious criminality as their path to exonerate past crimes and empower new ones. Those who stand against Trump and his allies must find the will and the language to explain why these crimes, past and planned, are all wrong, all intolerable—and how the gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy."

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Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, “[The] false claim by Trump that Harris is generating fake big crowds with AI was a true Captain Queeg moment, maybe the most bat-guano crazy thing I’ve seen in 40 years of covering presidential elections.”

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Plato- "You should not honor men more than truth."

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Always remember that Trump accused Ted Cruz of fraud in the 2016 Iowa caucus. It's a ridiculous accusation, isn't politically charged in itself, and is a perfect example of Trump holding his brand in higher regard than actual election integrity.

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James Baldwin- "Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it."

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Some people think it was undemocratic the way that Kamala became the nominee, but not me. If Biden was forced out, that would be different. He was not "forced," he was convinced. He had every right to continue, but came to see, like everyone else, that he would lose to Trump. 

Democracy is not strictly voting, democracy is also discussing and debating. It's more of a verb than a noun. 

Everybody had already voted in the primaries, but he was no longer the nominee, which frees the delegates. There's no formal process on what to do next. Biden endorsed Kamala and everybody jumped on board, seeing her as our best shot. She was unopposed going into the convention, and became the nominee. Someone could have opposed her, but she had so much support that it would have been ridiculous. This is all perfectly consistent with democracy.

Was Nixon "forced" to resign, or "convinced" to resign? He was convinced. He lost support. He could have remained president and been impeached and removed, the same way Biden could remained the nominee and lost.

Something like 30% of Democrats were happy with Biden being the nominee, but after Kamala became the nominee, something like 80% were happy with her. That seems like a victory for democracy. 

I understand how the biggest Biden supporters were unsettled by how all of this happened, but it can't be overlooked that he dropped out as a result of discussions- people making their case to him, and him not having a strong enough rebuttal. 

The people who really didn't like how this happened though, were the people who wanted the Democrats to lose anyway. They were hoping for a chaotic convention, and were disappointed that the whole process didn't hurt the Democrats. They overlooked the fact that Biden left of his own volition, and that Democrats became very happy with their nominee.

If Camila wins, Republicans are going to use this as a way to delegitimize her.

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The guy thanked Putin for "another great deal" in the prisoner swap. Putin had Americans wrongfully imprisoned and traded them for murderers. Only psychos and degenerates would praise this. (And idiots.)

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In 2022, still upset about his big fraud lie, Trump said the situation, “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

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Invoking Trump Derangement Syndrome is a symptom of Trump Delerium Syndrome, a made-up disorder afflicting many of Trump's followers, causing them to overlook Trump's own derangement by imagining that there's a disorder making it irrational to criticize him.

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If Trump wins in 2024, there is no possible way that J.D. Vance will certify the 2028 election if the Democrats win. (I believe this has been clarified in the law, not that the law would make a difference to Trump.)

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Apparently Trump was jubilant that India's Covid number started to skyrocket, because it made our numbers look better. Maybe that's true, and maybe it's not, but would you be shocked if it was true? You should be shocked if it was true. It's a failure that we can even parse the question.

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Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World- "One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."

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Sun Tzu- "An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes."

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Leo Tolstoy, Path of Life- "An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life—becoming a better person." 

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In 2024 Trump could legitimately win, Biden could legitimately win. There's no amount of votes that Biden could win by, where Trump wouldn't proclaim victory due to a stolen election. 

This feels like a truism at this point. If Biden legitimately wins, and you believe that Trump would accept it under any circumstances, there's nothing you wouldn't believe. 

If Trump says it, it's nothing short of his True Believers' gospel. If Trump is legitimately voted in, I accept it and wish us all the best. If Biden is voted in, do the same.

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Thank God Trump and Johnson are finally weighing on election security, otherwise we'd have nothing to base our trust on except Trump's own attorney general, his handpicked heads of all the intel communities, his own homeland security people in charge of election security, the head of every branch of the military, including the joint chief, the entire international community, all reputable media even including Fox news, etc, etc. It's actually really easy to tell that it was a free and fair election when you're not in a personality cult, headed by a guy who told 30k+ documented lies, a guy who says that he does tell the truth when he can.

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Why does Trump attack the judges and their family members? To delegitimize their eventual ruling. He's also hedging the outcome. If they rule for him, great, they saw the light. If they rule against him, it's because they hate him, nothing to do with the facts. Attacking the judge prior, it's what a guilty person does. It's the same he did with the 2016 election. He said that if he won it was legit, and if he lost it was fraud. Notice that he's talking about the same exact election there, all the details the exact same, but the outcome determines whether there was fraud or not. Not sure if you are a history buff, but this fraud-if-I-lose outlook played a part in the 2020 election.

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Crypto-fascism is the secret support for, or admiration of, fascism or trends close to the ideology. The term is used to imply that an individual or group keeps this support or admiration hidden to avoid political persecution or political suicide. A person, organisation or idea possessing this tendency would be described by the adjective "crypto-fascist".

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Say Trump wins and uses the presidency to enrich himself. Is that alone worth caring about? Reminds me of something a Native American teacher told me when I student taught on the Acoma Reservation. Nobody on the reservation paid for water, but the expectation was that they would conserve it. One guy didn't care. He had a full yard of grass that he'd water all the time. Everyone thought it was odd, and not the right thing to do, but everyone just went on with their days. He was greedy, yes well.

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Can we all just agree to accept the results of the next election, including a peaceful transfer of power, should there be one? I'm not sure if you follow the news Dear Reader, but the one guy last time around wouldn't make that promise, and it lead to some problems. Here's my promise:

If I still support Biden after he plots to cling to power after losing 60 lawsuits, and after MSNBC calls it for his opponent along with all the rest of the media, and after his attorney general, his national security adviser, homeland security chief in charge of election security, and the head of every military branch declare it a free and fair election that he lost, along with every independent foreign observer, and after Biden calls up the Democratic Secretary of State of Michigan telling her to find exactly enough votes to overturn the results, and after 92 Senators confirm the vote (including 42 Democrats), and after he demands for Kamala Harris to overturn the confirmation of the vote which she refuses, after he paid two independent election auditors who came up with nothing, and after he summoned his followers to the Capitol grounds at the exact time Congress was confirming the vote for Biden's opponent, promising them that it's going to be a wild time, and after Biden gave a speech along with others including his son Hunter, all saying some variation of needing to fight like hell in order to save the country, prompting Biden's supporters to subsequently ransack the Capitol, trashing Mike Johnson's office, disrupting the vote for hours, while chanting for the death of members of Congress and Harris, all of whom had to hide, while Biden watched from the White House in a secluded room, sitting on his hands while countless advisors and former advisors begged him to do something to stop the violence, but instead he occasionally reminded the mob how Kamala Harris let them all down, tweeting his support for them, causing half his cabinet to resign, later suggesting to a reporter that maybe Harris did deserve to be killed, and even after Biden himself gets indicted by a grand jury in a criminal plot to undermine the election, where Harris testified that she told him there was no evidence for any fraud and that he should just move on, the same trial where Biden's own former lawyers testify that Biden said he was going to hold on to power no matter what, a trial in which they themselves plead guilty to helping in a plot to undermine the election... again, if I still support Biden after all that, I'm sure everyone can agree that I would be a poor soul who has dropped all capacity for reason and has fallen under the spell of a dangerous snake oil salesman who should be committed to the nearest asylum for the criminally insane, no longer a public menace.

I pledge that I will not support him after that. Or after he does even one of those things. Or if he simply refuses to say he'll accept the peaceful transfer of power before the election even takes place. That's my promise to the country.

If it was one person who believed someone deserve to be president after all this stuff, everyone would think they are crazy, but it's a significant majority of the Republican party. I don't think they're crazy. I just think they've fallen under the spell of a snake oil salesman, and have dropped their capacity of reason in order to continue believing their guy has the magic potion that will cure all of our ills.

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The fact that Trump is crazy is already baked into the cake with voters, if he says something deranged it's not chalked up to some version of insanity. It's chalked up to Trump being Trump. That puts Biden at a serious disadvantage, because his words matter. 

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Brett Stephens on Sam Harris's podcast, looking at the next election as optimistically as possible.

"Even if Trump wins the election, chances are the Democrats keep the Senate, and maybe take the house. It's a federal system of divided powers there's a limit to what Trump 2.0 could do, and I hope that case is right, and I hope that we learn again that Trump's bark is usually worse than his bite. But the argument I have always made about Trump, this is going back to 2015 and 2016, before he was elected, wasn't so much that he could bring about a catastrophe, although he could, it's the corrosiveness of what he represents. It's that he is a corrosive substance on the glue that holds our democracy together. And by the way coming to those listening to your podcast you are in the center to center right, if you are type of listener who doesn't like Trump but it is thinking that not so bad, and he's better than that woke left, nothing will do more to provide the ultra woke antifa left than another Trump administration. He activates the worst elements of everyone, including his opponents."

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Trump month- With an Iowa school shooting, he said we need to get over it and move on, i.e, accept it. Called critics vermin. Said that immigrants are "poisoning our blood." Question Nikki Haley's nationality (same as he did with Obama, Ted cruz, Kamala Harris, i.e political rivals with a different ethnicity.) Argued in court that president is immune from conviction, even if they assassinate political rivals. Repeated his election lies ad infinitum, since he knows that if you repeat something often enough, is generally accepted as true.

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I often think about all the books that have come out attacking Trump by people who used to be close to him. If their motive is pure profit, why would they alienate their own base? If Obama's former cabinet members, friends, and associates started coming out with book after book after book saying how awful a person he is, how stupid he is, how cruel he is, my cognitive dissonance will be off the charts. 

It puts me in mind of this quote by Buddha:

"People should learn to see and so avoid all danger. Just as a wise man keeps away from mad dogs, so one should not make friends with evil men."

Yep, it's like Trump said, he picks all the best people to work for him. So if Trump is so great at picking the best people, take those people for their word and wake up to the fact that he's a... hmmm, how do you sum up what they all say clearly, concisely and precisely? I know- they all confirm that he is a cruel, self-serving asshole. 

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If we knew nothing about Trump other than the fact that during the worst national emergency of our lifetimes, he favored helping governors that were more appreciative of him (vs simply helping the people suffering in their state), it would tell his whole story.

Would there be a greater scandal in US history? And he just flat out said he does it. People keep saying to keep politics out of this, but this guy's degenerate personality is actually killing people. How else could it be interpreted?

Again, to paraphrase Trump, to governors- "I'll help your people if you be quiet about deficiencies in my response and just show appreciation toward me."

https://to.pbs.org/2UnjAJP

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Horace Greeley- "Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character."

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I just listened to the most incredible book- The Trump Tapes, by Bob Woodward. When I borrowed it from the library, I didn't even expect to listen to it. I gave it a shot and was hooked immediately. It's not like any other book. 

Doesn't matter who you are, you think you know Trump. You don't until you listen to this book. It's like 12 hours of Woodward's taped interviews that he did for the book, Rage. Trump didn't expect the audio to be released, and Woodward didn't expect to release it. He said he never did anything like that, but quoting Trump doesn't come across like the tapes. It somehow humanizes him, and makes him seem like an even bigger idiot than you thought. 

Woodward has some commentary for clarity, and to correct obvious untruths. He has a little bit of analysis in it, but it isn't even necessary, the tapes tell the whole tail. 

Here's a smattering of my notes.

-Okay, I'll give Trump credit for a joke. Bob Woodward asked him that if the Republican party is the party of Lincoln and Nixon, why did Lincoln succeed and why did Nixon fail. Trump immediately said, "Because of you."

-Trump does go on to say that Nixon failed because of his personality because people thought he was too severe, he didn't let other people in. Woodward forgot he was a journalist for a second and had to break in to remind Trump that Nixon failed because he was a criminal, doing criminal things.

-Woodward pointed out that in Nixon's resignation speech he warned to not fall into hatred, or hatred will destroy you. His exact quote was, "Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself."

Trump agreed that hatred destroyed Nixon. This was in 2016 here we are 2024, and guess what, hatred has destroyed Trump.

-Woodward recounted Trump's announcement speech when he said that Mexico is not bringing their best people, and something crossed my mind. His example of the worst type of people that they were sending was... rapists. And now here we are, seven short years later... surprise, Trump himself was found guilty of rape. But he's running for president.

-Why are Trump's insults and accusations just a form of I'm rubber and you're glue. He knows that he's a rapist, so his example of terrible people coming here are rapists. He knows that he's a liar, so he calls others liars. He knows that he's trying to steal the election (again, because every single person he knew and trusted told him that he lost it), so he accuses Biden of the same. On and on and on.

-Trump himself says that he brings the rage out in people, and that he doesn't know if that's an advantage or a liability. Maybe it's an asset to him and a liability to the country. People say that he tapped into existing rage, and I'm sure that's true to some point, but it's also true that he is manifesting more rage than existed to begin with.

-At one point Woodward was trying to convince him to do a Manhattan Project style federal program for Covid and he was resisting it, saying that no matter what he does people will always say he did the wrong thing. He's truly in the dumps, saying that if a state asks for 1000 ventilators and he gave them 10,000, they'll still complain. 

He's never thinking about it in terms of what he SHOULD do! He only thinks strictly in terms of how something will be perceived. Insane! 

-My jaw only dropped a few times during his presidency, and one time was when it came out that he was prioritizing aid to governors that were friendly to him.

-Trump said that testing for covid was a double-edged sword. No it's not! Testing is how you slow the spread. He legitimately did not want testing, because higher numbers make him look worse.

-Insane that when asked what he's going to do to get reelected, it's always some variation of... I'm just going to keep doing a great job, or, the virus wasn't my fault! When pressed for specifics he always brings up criminal justice reform, assuring Woodward that no one else could do it. Obama did it. And give me a break, is that seriously what Trump thinks Trump is going to be known for, some meager and overdue criminal justice reforms? It would blow your mind how often he brought this up.

-It's worth really considering the fact that one of his key personality traits is self-praise. What kind of ridiculous person is this??? Who talks like that???

-Of all the reasons to not like Trump there's one that stands out above the rest for me personally, it's one of the few things that really makes my blood boil. I know it somehow related to my misophonia, but it's when he lowers his voice, talking in a deliberate whisper for effect. 

Number one, it's the sound that bugs me, but number two, it's the cheap showmanship of it. When people listen to this and fall for his theatrics, do they not realize that he's playing them like a fiddle? People think he's so persuasive, but it's such a poor act. I actually get embarrassed for him. He couldn't be cast as a palace guard in Brady Bunch play version of Romeo and Juliet.

-He says that in order to get reform in NATO you need to be prepared to walk away from it. Jesus, we're risking the most enduring alliance in the history of the world for a few billion dollars, a rounding error in the GDP of the involved countries. When Trump first met Mattis, he wanted to impress upon him that NATO was obsolete. Mattis said that if it didn't exist, we'd have to invent it.

-Bob asked for Trump's response to a Mexican woman who said the Trump doesn't respect her. Trump asked if she was here legally or illegally and Bob said he didn't know. Trump said that in polls he does great with Hispanics who are here legally but not with ones who are here illegally. What kind of ridiculous hypothetical poll was that. Does it start with the question of whether they're here legally or illegally? Just a perfect Trump lie, untrue on its surface.

-The Kim Jong-un stuff is absolutely insane. He just won't stop talking about how much Kim Jong-un likes him and respects him, but in his stories about it, you can tell that he's being played. All you have to do is flatter Trump and you get anything you want.

-On the possibility of nuclear war, and Trump provoking Kim Jong-un, he said, "If he shoots he shoots." Nuclear deterrence is supposed to make that possibility unthinkable, not just, "If he shoots he shoots," being decided by Trump's whims. Earlier Trump says that he doesn't spend any time thinking about the future. 

-He keeps talking about Kim Jong-un smiling in the picture with him... smiling... he just can't believe that he's smiling. "He's happy," he says it over and over and over. He really likes that Kim Jong-un likes him, or he really likes that he pretends to like him. He couldn't really be sure, could he? You can't listen to these tapes without being embarrassed for him.

-Something new to me, Page and Strock apparently texted each other saying that if Hillary loses, the insurance policy is that they will take Trump down. Huh. I was surprised when Woodward came out to say it was a legitimate FBI problem. It really was! I thought it was just a right-wing talking point. It's good to learn something once in awhile. Trump won't let it go, he goes over it over and over and over, calls it a coup attempt. And Trump knows coup attempts! It should be noted that they didn't actually attempt a coup.

-With how bad he talks about Comey, it's almost shocking to remember that without Comey and his letter about Hillary several days before the election, Trump wouldn't have become president. That moment was the game changer.

-Take a step back. He's doing a book with BOB WOODWARD, the guy who took down Nixon. The whole way through he sounds like he thought he would convince Woodward how great he is, by saying how he makes Kim Jong-un smile in pictures, how they shared some of the most beautiful letters ever written back and forth, "love letters" in fact, and how his decision to shut down travel from China was really the beginning and end of his Covid policy, all that was needed or necessary, always updating Woodward on the number of Twitter followers he has, as if Woodward asked the question, always laser-focused on perception versus execution. He keeps saying how he's been the greatest president for black people, then oh so cleverly adding, except maybe Lincoln. Maybe Lincoln. It's mind-boggling how he thought any of this was a good idea. 

Trump pointed Woodward toward other people in his administration to talk to, and they end up contradicting him, of course, because he lied about everything, and they don't know what Trump said to him!

-Seriously, how dumb is Trump? Robert Reich just wrote a recent article about it. It's titled, Seriously, How Dumb Is Trump?

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/seriously-how-dumb-is-trump

He keeps defaming E. Jean Carroll over and over, getting charged more, opening himself up for more lawsuits. Even after she asked a jury to charge him enough to make him stop, they had awarded her $91 million, he kept proclaiming his innocence, kept saying she was lying, setting up another potential trial. He just can't help himself. 

He recently said magnets don't work once they get wet.

He said that unlike Lincoln, he would have made the Civil War unnecessary by negotiation.

His Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, called him "a fucking moron."

McMaster called him "a dope."

Mnuchin, Priebis, Kelly and Murdoch called him "an idiot."

Economic adviser Cohn called him "dumb as shit." 

McConnell once joked with his Senate colleagues, asking if they knew how Tillerson was able to deny calling Trump a moron. Because he called him a "fucking moron."

These are HIS people, and critically, they don't dispute it! 

A Wharton School of Business professor called him, "the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.”

His sister said he had someone take the SAT's for him.

Just a quick reminder that his own Chief of Staff said he’s “the most flawed person I’ve ever met,” and his Secretary of Defense said he’s “more dangerous than anyone could ever imagine.”

That's... pretty extraordinary. 

Why does he tell people planning to vote for him that the election is rigged? You can imagine some thinking, well then why bother?

Half of his former cabinet members send that Trump is unfit to serve.

Dozens of Republican foreign policy experts have said in a letter: “He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood. He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate criticism." 

Why is it? He doesn't think he needs to read or comprehend, he just acts on instinct. Many former cabinet members and aides attest that he cannot follow along in meetings, and doesn't read anything. 

This comes through so clearly in the tapes. He can NOT follow a thought. Woodward sees this, and separate from these tapes he's interviewing Covid advisors who are saying the same thing. At one point he gives notes to Trump that his advisors we're trying to get through to him. 

At one point Trump is on the other end of the line, writing down Woodward's notes that he wouldn't take from his own advisors! 

Woodward tells him over and over and over that doesn't hear a plan, what is the plan? The answer is always just a variation of, we're just going to keep doing a great job, and, it's not my fault!

-Incidentally, Reich says that he got so far because he has emotional intelligence beyond compare. He knows how to influence people's emotions. Reich says,

"This is where Trump’s brain outperforms the brains of ordinary mortals. He knows how to manipulate people. He has an uncanny ability to discover their emotional vulnerabilities — their fears, anxieties, prejudices, and darkest desires — and use them for his own purposes.

"He's a con man and a fraud. Look at his university, his charity, his business, his bankruptcies, his handling of Covid, his lie about the 2020 election.

"This genius — combined with utter stupidity in every other dimension — poses the clearest and most terrifying danger to America and the world."

-Trump keeps telling Woodward that he's responsible for everything, and he makes all of his decisions on instinct. Note, not by actually listening to people and understanding the issues, he makes decisions just by whatever is bouncing around his head.

-Two clear examples that illustrate how stupid he is. He didn't take credit for the vaccine in order to get more people vaccinated. And he was clearly obsessed with perception of the disease, versus the disease itself. Somehow he said on one tape that he's trying to play it down. As if truth does not matter. 

-Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for the New York Times wrote, "With an election 53 days away, perhaps no other president did as much the undermine himself. 

-Dan Pfeiffer, a senior advisor to former president Obama, said, "Trump treated a reporter famous for bringing down a president like his personal sounding board. It is truly one of the most stupid, self-destructive communications decisions made by a politician in memory.

-You just can't really understand the gravity of it until you hear it. Substantive question after substantive question after substantive question, over several years, met with him whining about how unfair everybody is to him. Woodward is flat out allowing him to tell his tale, but there's nothing there except grievance and the feeling that he's a victim. 

You NEVER hear Trump go into any policy depth ever, anywhere, or if he does it's complete nonsense, like with the tariffs.

-Trump- "I sat with you for hours and you're probably going to screw me, but that's the way it goes. Bush sat with you for hours and you screwed him but... I ain't no Bush!"

Well unfortunately that's true! He doesn't come close to rising to the level of Bush.

-Woodward gets to the bottom of Trump's own messy tale through a bunch of different sources, and he has Trump's number. Trump gets aggressive after realizing it, saying that he knows that he's not going to write a fair book. A fair book to Trump is one thing... a book where Trump is the hero, Trump's story as dictated by Trump. Not a book based on the truth.

Woodward's analysis is that Trump saw him as a worthy adversary, somebody that he could win over. He wanted Woodward to tell Trump's presidential story as Trump saw it himself, even if it didn't add up. He really just wanted Woodward to write his handful of sound bites. U

I know I'm repeating myself, but until you hear it, you really can't imagine how many times he says such basic stuff- the beautiful letters of between him and Kim Jong-un, he's the best president for black people, since maybe Lincoln, Covid wasn't his fault, and he cut off travel from China immediately when everybody was against it (a flat out lie), etc, etc, it was endless, and with no more substance than I just described. He has zero command of the issues. Once again, his effort is 100% based on image, which when you think about it, is all that we knew about Trump before he was a politician. That he's obsessed with image and status, and that he had a bunch of bankruptcies.

-There's not a more singular crystalline example of Trump's laser focus on his own status, than him in an audio interview the morning of September 11th talking about how he now has the tallest building in South Manhattan. (That's the type of thing that very soon is going to be dismissed as a deep fake.)

-Why did he do it??? Lindsey Graham told Trump that Woodward would not put words in his mouth, and Woodward didn't! Really think about this, 95% of this audiobook is Trump's own words. Woodward did his homework, gave him a chance to say his piece, pressed back when he should press back, and was not hostile. He allowed Trump to self-immolate.