In Trump's defense, kids are incredibly difficult to talk to. You try to sit them down to have a meaningful conversation about how tariffs and a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz are driving up toy prices, and they just keep repeating, "But I want it."
Donald Trump does not know how to read a room. He'll spew the same BS regardless of the audience. He always acts like he is on some campaign stump. How he talked to the children was inappropriate at best. What was worse is that the so called adults in the room including RFK Jr. and Linda McMahon did not do anything. You would think someone would whisper in his ear that what he is saying is inappropriate to children. Nope he just let it go on.
this *is* the guy that addressed 35K boy scouts in 2017, dissing former presidents, ranting about inside baseball politics, and yukking it up about yacht sex parties, so...
Trump is essentially a loose cannon. He just rolls around the deck, or in this case the White House, smashing everything in sight. He sees no difference in conversing with a child than with an adult. In fact, he probably has a better chance of indoctrinating a child than a living, breathing, thinking adult.
Sounds like you're describing talking to magats and not children. It appears from your comment that you don't spend a lot of time around children, they're much smarter than you think. Hell, they're much smarter than the average magat! I wonder how many children at those propaganda sessions were removed because they didn't want to stand next to him because they said, "That old man smells like shit!"?
It remains a persistent, baffling pathology of the American commentariat to constantly search for the phantom threads of strategy within a mind that has spent a lifetime proving its absolute vacancy.
Egger posits that Trump’s bizarre compulsion to interrogate a DoorDash driver about transgender sports, or to complain about Barack Obama’s middle name to grade-schoolers, suggests an "inability to turn off" his supposed strategic "shtick." This generous framing elevates an involuntary verbal hemorrhage into a tactical choice.
I think we need to stop asking why Trump refuses to exercise discipline or alter his political calculus, because doing so falsely implies he possesses the cognitive capacity to formulate a calculus in the first place. There is no hidden genius, no calculated "secret sauce," and certainly no internal monologue weighing the optics of ranting about autopens to children at an Easter Egg Roll. To ask if Trump considered the political ramifications of his behavior is to fundamentally misunderstand the subject. The answer to any question beginning with "Did Trump think of..." is always a resounding, categorical no. He simply is not capable.
I think we would be better off, if we all just admitted that reality.
Andrew, I realize you likely skimmed my initial comment (you’re a busy guy I get it), but emphasizing that he "can't turn it off" merely reinforces my point. That phrasing implies a switch exists. You cannot turn off a lightbulb that lacks a filament.
In your piece, you speculate about "weakening impulse control" and an inability to sublimate his id, but framing his outbursts as a failure to suppress an impulse still generously credits him with a baseline of operational control he has never possessed.
My argument is not that he can or cannot flip the switch; it is that we must stop pretending the wiring is there at all. This is not a malfunction of discipline or a stubborn refusal to abandon his "secret sauce." It is an absolute structural void.
If your ultimate conclusion is that he fundamentally lacks the cognitive capacity to grasp basic reality, then we are in complete agreement.
I wrote a piece about Trump's inability to change course. Your critique is that Trump lacks the ability to change course. We agree on everything except, apparently, on the substance of what I wrote!
First, Andrew, I genuinely hope you are doing okay. Remember, I am just a random guy on the internet.
Our disagreement lies entirely in the substance of your framing. You wrote a piece analyzing a refusal to alter strategy, attributing his behavior to weakened impulse control, a stubborn reliance on his "secret sauce," and a failure to execute a tactical pivot.
My critique is that he is cognitively incapable of forming a strategy in the first place.
A strategic miscalculation and an absolute cognitive void are fundamentally different things. If they are synonymous to you, then our definitions simply diverge, but if you actually agree with my premise, I would love to read a future piece from you that abandons the tactical framing entirely and plainly states the reality: We elected the most profoundly cognitively incapable human imaginable.
Hmm. Even though Trump is probably a sociopath who is also a narcissist, I do recall there was a time that he DID occasionally keep his mouth shut when it served his political interest to do so (his weird speech to the boy scouts being an exception). But old age and being totally surrounded by and immersed in an environment where the message is that his sh*t doesn't stinkm, has made him YOLO.
1000x this! David French, who I enjoy listening to and even occasionally agree with, has regularly insisted that he doesn't agree with the idea that Trump is simply stupid because he's been too successful for that to really be the case. My contention has always been that Trump's successes are not a reflection of his skill or intellect, but the utter brokenness of the American system and the epistemic collapse of our information environment.
Trump doesn't employ strategies, he has simply spent his life in a country that rewards relentless salesmen, and his natural impulse to proclaim that everything he does is the best thing ever only superficially resembles a sales pitch. But he doesn't care about actual sales, his sole care and occupation for his entire life (at least since his psyche learned that his father would never love him) has been to do whatever made people treat him as though he was a great success. Through stimulus and response he has come to his current regime of relentless boasting and manic focus on tasteless external symbols of wealth.
It is devilishly hard for most of us to -not- attribute intelligence or agency when we think we see it. The current AI hype craze is another perfect example. Richard Dawkins recently fell for this, despite his whole career being based on arguing for the opposite. So I get why people feel the need to treat Trump like he's, if not a rational actor, then at least someone who is making choices. But you're exactly right, he's not making choices. The internal life of a narcissistic sociopath is nothing like what most of the rest of us experience.
I like to think of him as a verbally incontinent and autistic evil Chauncey Gardener. People around him project onto him abilities that he simply does not have.
We all have cognitively limited people in our lives who we assume will say disturbing things on every occasion, and we don't make excuses for it. The more disturbing thing is when all the people around Trump lie about what he's said and implicitly agree with his ravings.
Bryson DeChambeau looks like he's wondering how the hell he ended up in a photo op with a rapidly decompensating narcissistic sociopath. Someone should remind Bryson that while he got a monstrous tax cut, our nuclear arsenal is under the exclusive control of an old man who can't shut the fuck up for a few minutes in front of children. Hope it was worth it, dude.
Andrew: "America, to its increasing distaste, has the sort of president who spends his days nattering insanely to children about the elections that have been stolen from him and the suspiciously ethnic middle names of his predecessors. And the president seems determined not to let them forget it."
To put it another way, America is getting exactly what us Bulwark folks knew they'd get should Trump win in 2024. Does anybody doubt, for example, that if Trump were in a room with the College of Cardinals, he would say with absolute conviction that he was more persecuted than Jesus Christ? Trump is who he's always been, and if economic conditions were more favorable, the great and good American people would look the other way. But now that people are feeling the pinch, they're finally noticing the crazy person who is running the country, only it's about 18 months too late.
Yep. I find it beyond ironic that the suddenly 'woke', at least to Trump, believe his assassination attempts were probably staged because you can't believe anything he says. Duh.
Tim - him, reading the room with the College of Cardinals - of course he’d say that. Since he’d have been briefed by his handlers on who they are, his keen ability at connecting to others would also trigger complaints about the Pope’s desire for Iran to have a nuke; how Catholics all love ‘Trump’, he does very well with them; Mel Gibson one of our greatest actors; my justices are Catholics; how everybody’s happy about abortion now because Trump gave it back to the states; and quizzing them on who do they like better Marco or JD?
I mean, it's certainly real life evidence to support that comics, movies, and TV are not wrong when they show super villains monologuing before they kill the Super Hero. If nothing else, this should give us some hope, because this weakness is always exploited to save the day.
I’m still trying to figure out why none of the adults in the room took action to release Trump’s child hostages. That performance was absolutely abusive.
Diminishing filters are a marker for dementia. At one time I got together regularly with nurses who worked the dementia unit in a care center, and the things that formerly sweet old Midwest Catholic grandmas would do were hair-curling.
His obvious mental decline cannot be sidestepped. Today's Trump has significant cognitive impairment. The cognitive impairment is amplifying his deep-seated personality issues, which include always being the center of attention. It's just that now, he's literally unable to stop yammering about his grievances.
A couple of them. I believe the're described by the pros in similar fashion to majors and minors at school. Major: Narcissism; Minor: Sociopathy. Though I am not a pro, I have studied these things a wee bit. I would add Borderline--the border is between the range of personality disorders and full-blown schizophrenia.
I have experience dealing with a borderline personality, and it is a thing to behold. Trump is many things, but borderline is not one of them. For starters, he doesn't exhibit the classic "I hate you, don't leave me" behavior borderlines engage in. And he doesn't operate from a fear of loss which, ironically enough, drives people away. But what he *does* have in common with borderlines is a sense of emptiness. The man has spent decades trying to fill his psychic holes with gaining wealth, destroying people, and banging women (occasionally against their will) and nothing he does will ever fill those holes. And this is what his enablers fail to understand. They all think that if they continually kiss his orange ass that they'll be rewarded, but they ignore all the evidence to the contrary. On the other hand, our erstwhile European allies and our enemies in Iran have figured Trump out: you don't kiss his ass, and you don't play his games. There's nothing more infuriating to a disordered man like Trump than being told "no". There's nothing more infuriating to a disordered man like Trump than having boundaries enforced on him.
I think he's a world-historic narcissistic sociopath with delusions of grandeur. Since he believes his place in history is comparable to Alexander the Great's and Napoleon's -- sure, donald -- there is no way to deal with him except holding one's ground and telling him no. And when he protests as he always does, you continue to say no.
I wonder if that is because his daughter, the smartest of the litter, Ivanka, is keeping a very low profile. You never see or hear her. She is too busy really running the family business while her chucklehead brothers get the spotlight.
They're not hiding anything anymore. No need to be sneaky or plan things. The Trump boys steal in plain sight. Ivanka is busy assuaging her husband's international ambitions - they're doing so well in Iran.
Those two were always in plain sight. I remember Eric boasting that his father’s company donated Bedford Golf Resort’s facility free of charge for the St Jude’s event held there every year. It was not free. Some reporter found this information for the current year, and the past five (I think), with the cost increasing every year. This was in the first administration.
This is the funny part; to me, at least. I will bet that they figured- until very recently-that they, or some chosen MAGAT- would keep the Oval Office in the next election. Sadly for them, many Americans no longer have their Trump-adoring rose-colored glasses, because they had to sell them to pay for gas.
I do think it is at least probable that Junior might run. But he will have a hard time crafting a positive message now. It is possible that this damn war might be the thing that saves us from MAGA, if Trump doesn’t manage to destroy us in the next two years.
The decreasing ability(or will) of the aging to “filter” their thoughts is pretty much a life thing. Add a bunch of sycophant yes men and woman around him, and that’s where we are.
Trump reminds me of a thousand old men I've known in my life who, at neighborhood barbeques, try to convince you into agreeing with them that people on social programs are lower than low... The last one I remember was trying to convince me that people on SNAP shouldn't be allowed to vote, even though his sole income for decades came from disability insurance for an infirmity no one could identify. I not-so-subtlely suggested to him that I believed there should be an upper age limit on voting.
"Or maybe it’s just the same solipsism and monomania Trump’s been carrying around in his skull all along". Bingo ! It was in Trump's best interests to shut up during the pandemic, too. But he just can't. This is not new; his ghostwriter noted years ago that Trump was incapable of focusing on anything for more than a few minutes.
Fortunately for Trump, people forgot or never paid attention to some of the seriously crazy shit he said during covid. That alone demonstrated the vacuousness of his brain, but too many ignored or tuned that out, hated the price of eggs, and were nostalgic for the pre-pandemic world.
Yes, but unfortunately, many of us are being groomed by this abnormal unregulated megalomaniac misfit. He has groomed many of us into saying "windmill" instead of "wind turbine" and saying "deal" instead of "agreement". When we adopt his language, we begin to adopt his way of thinking. Resistance begins with refusing to adopt his childish mob-boss vocabulary.
In other messaging disasters: Not sure driving up gas prices a buck and a half works great with having yourself photographed daily amongst the Liberace-but-tackier decor.
The reports that Operation Freedom was nixed by the Kuwaitis and Saudis has gotten lost in the crazy. Would love to get a quick take from Mark Hertling on this and the public divorce of the UAE and the Saudis.
The two men exchanged gifts, with Leo giving Rubio a pen carved from olive wood and bearing the coat of arms of the pontificate, which the pope described as representing peace.
Little Marco gave Leo a little crystal football the size of a paperweight engraved with the U.S. State Department seal, joking that he was aware that the Pope was "a baseball guy", referencing Leo's Chicago White Sox fandom...
“I know you’re a baseball guy, but I mean it has the seal of the State Department,” Rubio told him.
The pope's reaction? "Wow. Okay."
Pure class, that Rubio. Just like his boss.
But I don't know why he didn't give the Pope a bit more useful gift than an egg-sized paperweight. He could have followed his fellow Trump administration member and icon of class Kash Patel's example of doling out classy swag in the form of bottles of his own privately labeled bourbon as gifts...
For decades Republicans railed on about how regulations strangle industries and innovation. Who'd have thought that, in the end, it would be them pulling the noose tight to choke the lights out?
And the "winners" they pick are complete losers...Spirit Airlines!? lol. Thank god the board/shareholders knew better than to get in it with Trump et al.
I doubt Trump’s ramblings to children who don’t yet vote will change the perception most of his followers have of him — it is doubtful most are even watching these events. What is changing people’s minds is not delivering on what they thought he would do. Or in the case of the Iran war going against what he had explicitly promised. His polling numbers in these areas are often worse than his aggregate. Had he delivered on his promises and still behaved this way, his polling wouldn’t be in the toilet. The stove may not be hot enough that it is searing off flesh, but it has shall we say, become uncomfortable. A trickle here and there can make all the difference and one can see the outlines of what could become a stampede.
In Trump's defense, kids are incredibly difficult to talk to. You try to sit them down to have a meaningful conversation about how tariffs and a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz are driving up toy prices, and they just keep repeating, "But I want it."
Donald Trump does not know how to read a room. He'll spew the same BS regardless of the audience. He always acts like he is on some campaign stump. How he talked to the children was inappropriate at best. What was worse is that the so called adults in the room including RFK Jr. and Linda McMahon did not do anything. You would think someone would whisper in his ear that what he is saying is inappropriate to children. Nope he just let it go on.
this *is* the guy that addressed 35K boy scouts in 2017, dissing former presidents, ranting about inside baseball politics, and yukking it up about yacht sex parties, so...
Great point about him not reading a room.
Trump's lame brain starts with "ideas" he tells himself...so why not share that imbecileity with others?
Trump is essentially a loose cannon. He just rolls around the deck, or in this case the White House, smashing everything in sight. He sees no difference in conversing with a child than with an adult. In fact, he probably has a better chance of indoctrinating a child than a living, breathing, thinking adult.
I'd say he did a pretty good job of indoctrinating a Republican party.
Well,to Donald the world revolves around him, so why read the room? We're just non-playing characters to him and his cabal of sycophants.
That is the only way he can read.(rooms not books) And even that he does badly.
Sounds a lot like tRUMP himself. A petulant child with little or no understanding of reality.
Sounds like you're describing talking to magats and not children. It appears from your comment that you don't spend a lot of time around children, they're much smarter than you think. Hell, they're much smarter than the average magat! I wonder how many children at those propaganda sessions were removed because they didn't want to stand next to him because they said, "That old man smells like shit!"?
Or the kids look at the adults and ask WHY? over and over and over
It remains a persistent, baffling pathology of the American commentariat to constantly search for the phantom threads of strategy within a mind that has spent a lifetime proving its absolute vacancy.
Egger posits that Trump’s bizarre compulsion to interrogate a DoorDash driver about transgender sports, or to complain about Barack Obama’s middle name to grade-schoolers, suggests an "inability to turn off" his supposed strategic "shtick." This generous framing elevates an involuntary verbal hemorrhage into a tactical choice.
I think we need to stop asking why Trump refuses to exercise discipline or alter his political calculus, because doing so falsely implies he possesses the cognitive capacity to formulate a calculus in the first place. There is no hidden genius, no calculated "secret sauce," and certainly no internal monologue weighing the optics of ranting about autopens to children at an Easter Egg Roll. To ask if Trump considered the political ramifications of his behavior is to fundamentally misunderstand the subject. The answer to any question beginning with "Did Trump think of..." is always a resounding, categorical no. He simply is not capable.
I think we would be better off, if we all just admitted that reality.
No offense but "can't turn it off" is literally in the subhed and repeated several times throughout the piece.
Andrew, I think you just need to start dropping in the Grandpa Simpson yelling at clouds meme into your posts so people get the gist of what you mean.
Andrew, I realize you likely skimmed my initial comment (you’re a busy guy I get it), but emphasizing that he "can't turn it off" merely reinforces my point. That phrasing implies a switch exists. You cannot turn off a lightbulb that lacks a filament.
In your piece, you speculate about "weakening impulse control" and an inability to sublimate his id, but framing his outbursts as a failure to suppress an impulse still generously credits him with a baseline of operational control he has never possessed.
My argument is not that he can or cannot flip the switch; it is that we must stop pretending the wiring is there at all. This is not a malfunction of discipline or a stubborn refusal to abandon his "secret sauce." It is an absolute structural void.
If your ultimate conclusion is that he fundamentally lacks the cognitive capacity to grasp basic reality, then we are in complete agreement.
I wrote a piece about Trump's inability to change course. Your critique is that Trump lacks the ability to change course. We agree on everything except, apparently, on the substance of what I wrote!
First, Andrew, I genuinely hope you are doing okay. Remember, I am just a random guy on the internet.
Our disagreement lies entirely in the substance of your framing. You wrote a piece analyzing a refusal to alter strategy, attributing his behavior to weakened impulse control, a stubborn reliance on his "secret sauce," and a failure to execute a tactical pivot.
My critique is that he is cognitively incapable of forming a strategy in the first place.
A strategic miscalculation and an absolute cognitive void are fundamentally different things. If they are synonymous to you, then our definitions simply diverge, but if you actually agree with my premise, I would love to read a future piece from you that abandons the tactical framing entirely and plainly states the reality: We elected the most profoundly cognitively incapable human imaginable.
Dead on, Patrick!
Hmm. Even though Trump is probably a sociopath who is also a narcissist, I do recall there was a time that he DID occasionally keep his mouth shut when it served his political interest to do so (his weird speech to the boy scouts being an exception). But old age and being totally surrounded by and immersed in an environment where the message is that his sh*t doesn't stinkm, has made him YOLO.
Exactly- to paraphrase the Talking Heads, stop trying to make it make sense.
1000x this! David French, who I enjoy listening to and even occasionally agree with, has regularly insisted that he doesn't agree with the idea that Trump is simply stupid because he's been too successful for that to really be the case. My contention has always been that Trump's successes are not a reflection of his skill or intellect, but the utter brokenness of the American system and the epistemic collapse of our information environment.
Trump doesn't employ strategies, he has simply spent his life in a country that rewards relentless salesmen, and his natural impulse to proclaim that everything he does is the best thing ever only superficially resembles a sales pitch. But he doesn't care about actual sales, his sole care and occupation for his entire life (at least since his psyche learned that his father would never love him) has been to do whatever made people treat him as though he was a great success. Through stimulus and response he has come to his current regime of relentless boasting and manic focus on tasteless external symbols of wealth.
It is devilishly hard for most of us to -not- attribute intelligence or agency when we think we see it. The current AI hype craze is another perfect example. Richard Dawkins recently fell for this, despite his whole career being based on arguing for the opposite. So I get why people feel the need to treat Trump like he's, if not a rational actor, then at least someone who is making choices. But you're exactly right, he's not making choices. The internal life of a narcissistic sociopath is nothing like what most of the rest of us experience.
I could not possibly agree more.
I like to think of him as a verbally incontinent and autistic evil Chauncey Gardener. People around him project onto him abilities that he simply does not have.
We all have cognitively limited people in our lives who we assume will say disturbing things on every occasion, and we don't make excuses for it. The more disturbing thing is when all the people around Trump lie about what he's said and implicitly agree with his ravings.
Agree. Vehemently.
Thank you, Patrick. You have his stinking scent, as many of us do. Many Americans have no sense of smell at all.
Bryson DeChambeau looks like he's wondering how the hell he ended up in a photo op with a rapidly decompensating narcissistic sociopath. Someone should remind Bryson that while he got a monstrous tax cut, our nuclear arsenal is under the exclusive control of an old man who can't shut the fuck up for a few minutes in front of children. Hope it was worth it, dude.
Andrew: "America, to its increasing distaste, has the sort of president who spends his days nattering insanely to children about the elections that have been stolen from him and the suspiciously ethnic middle names of his predecessors. And the president seems determined not to let them forget it."
To put it another way, America is getting exactly what us Bulwark folks knew they'd get should Trump win in 2024. Does anybody doubt, for example, that if Trump were in a room with the College of Cardinals, he would say with absolute conviction that he was more persecuted than Jesus Christ? Trump is who he's always been, and if economic conditions were more favorable, the great and good American people would look the other way. But now that people are feeling the pinch, they're finally noticing the crazy person who is running the country, only it's about 18 months too late.
FML.
"he would say with absolute conviction that he was more persecuted than Jesus Christ"
For good measure, he would add that Trump was persecuted with less justification.
Yep. I find it beyond ironic that the suddenly 'woke', at least to Trump, believe his assassination attempts were probably staged because you can't believe anything he says. Duh.
Tim - him, reading the room with the College of Cardinals - of course he’d say that. Since he’d have been briefed by his handlers on who they are, his keen ability at connecting to others would also trigger complaints about the Pope’s desire for Iran to have a nuke; how Catholics all love ‘Trump’, he does very well with them; Mel Gibson one of our greatest actors; my justices are Catholics; how everybody’s happy about abortion now because Trump gave it back to the states; and quizzing them on who do they like better Marco or JD?
Donald Trump is psychologically and maybe even physiologically incapable of shutting the fuck up.
His narcissism overrides every instinct he has, even his highly honed instinct for self preservation.
Megalomaniac!
“Has Trump Considered Shutting The Eff Up?”
Pfft. 😂 Have you met this guy? I’ve seen supervillains less in love with their own voice.
I mean, it's certainly real life evidence to support that comics, movies, and TV are not wrong when they show super villains monologuing before they kill the Super Hero. If nothing else, this should give us some hope, because this weakness is always exploited to save the day.
I’m still trying to figure out why none of the adults in the room took action to release Trump’s child hostages. That performance was absolutely abusive.
Perhaps it's because those people are just as monstrous as their boss.
Yes, you’re right and that is what is so scary. These people are responsible for protecting our children.
I recall a Boy Scout speech in 2017 that was much, much worse.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40715185
It's always Groundhog Day around here!
Diminishing filters are a marker for dementia. At one time I got together regularly with nurses who worked the dementia unit in a care center, and the things that formerly sweet old Midwest Catholic grandmas would do were hair-curling.
His obvious mental decline cannot be sidestepped. Today's Trump has significant cognitive impairment. The cognitive impairment is amplifying his deep-seated personality issues, which include always being the center of attention. It's just that now, he's literally unable to stop yammering about his grievances.
He's a walking, talking manifestation of a character disorder.
A couple of them. I believe the're described by the pros in similar fashion to majors and minors at school. Major: Narcissism; Minor: Sociopathy. Though I am not a pro, I have studied these things a wee bit. I would add Borderline--the border is between the range of personality disorders and full-blown schizophrenia.
I have experience dealing with a borderline personality, and it is a thing to behold. Trump is many things, but borderline is not one of them. For starters, he doesn't exhibit the classic "I hate you, don't leave me" behavior borderlines engage in. And he doesn't operate from a fear of loss which, ironically enough, drives people away. But what he *does* have in common with borderlines is a sense of emptiness. The man has spent decades trying to fill his psychic holes with gaining wealth, destroying people, and banging women (occasionally against their will) and nothing he does will ever fill those holes. And this is what his enablers fail to understand. They all think that if they continually kiss his orange ass that they'll be rewarded, but they ignore all the evidence to the contrary. On the other hand, our erstwhile European allies and our enemies in Iran have figured Trump out: you don't kiss his ass, and you don't play his games. There's nothing more infuriating to a disordered man like Trump than being told "no". There's nothing more infuriating to a disordered man like Trump than having boundaries enforced on him.
I think he's a world-historic narcissistic sociopath with delusions of grandeur. Since he believes his place in history is comparable to Alexander the Great's and Napoleon's -- sure, donald -- there is no way to deal with him except holding one's ground and telling him no. And when he protests as he always does, you continue to say no.
That is not how Borderline diagnosis works. Or what Borderline personality disorder is.
He's frankly not that much different from his first term, and his "dementia" never precludes him from sniffing out a new way to make money.
I wonder if that is because his daughter, the smartest of the litter, Ivanka, is keeping a very low profile. You never see or hear her. She is too busy really running the family business while her chucklehead brothers get the spotlight.
They're too busy raking in crypto loot to care what she's up to.
True, but those two would be the one’s who get caught. The real money is in the Mid East where her husband prowls.
She’s busy counting her money
They're not hiding anything anymore. No need to be sneaky or plan things. The Trump boys steal in plain sight. Ivanka is busy assuaging her husband's international ambitions - they're doing so well in Iran.
Those two were always in plain sight. I remember Eric boasting that his father’s company donated Bedford Golf Resort’s facility free of charge for the St Jude’s event held there every year. It was not free. Some reporter found this information for the current year, and the past five (I think), with the cost increasing every year. This was in the first administration.
This is the funny part; to me, at least. I will bet that they figured- until very recently-that they, or some chosen MAGAT- would keep the Oval Office in the next election. Sadly for them, many Americans no longer have their Trump-adoring rose-colored glasses, because they had to sell them to pay for gas.
I do think it is at least probable that Junior might run. But he will have a hard time crafting a positive message now. It is possible that this damn war might be the thing that saves us from MAGA, if Trump doesn’t manage to destroy us in the next two years.
That's why I didn't use the term "dementia". He is "cognitively impaired". Not yet full-blown dementia. But getting there.
The decreasing ability(or will) of the aging to “filter” their thoughts is pretty much a life thing. Add a bunch of sycophant yes men and woman around him, and that’s where we are.
Trump reminds me of a thousand old men I've known in my life who, at neighborhood barbeques, try to convince you into agreeing with them that people on social programs are lower than low... The last one I remember was trying to convince me that people on SNAP shouldn't be allowed to vote, even though his sole income for decades came from disability insurance for an infirmity no one could identify. I not-so-subtlely suggested to him that I believed there should be an upper age limit on voting.
"Or maybe it’s just the same solipsism and monomania Trump’s been carrying around in his skull all along". Bingo ! It was in Trump's best interests to shut up during the pandemic, too. But he just can't. This is not new; his ghostwriter noted years ago that Trump was incapable of focusing on anything for more than a few minutes.
Fortunately for Trump, people forgot or never paid attention to some of the seriously crazy shit he said during covid. That alone demonstrated the vacuousness of his brain, but too many ignored or tuned that out, hated the price of eggs, and were nostalgic for the pre-pandemic world.
Yes, but unfortunately, many of us are being groomed by this abnormal unregulated megalomaniac misfit. He has groomed many of us into saying "windmill" instead of "wind turbine" and saying "deal" instead of "agreement". When we adopt his language, we begin to adopt his way of thinking. Resistance begins with refusing to adopt his childish mob-boss vocabulary.
That's just a bunch of covfefe, Bob!
As far as I've seen and heard, the only people he's groomed to call them "windmills" are the people who were stupid enough to vote for him.
In other messaging disasters: Not sure driving up gas prices a buck and a half works great with having yourself photographed daily amongst the Liberace-but-tackier decor.
I grew up thinking Liberace couldn't be out-tacked.
I think even Liberace would say ol' Dementia Donnie is over the top with tackiness!
The reports that Operation Freedom was nixed by the Kuwaitis and Saudis has gotten lost in the crazy. Would love to get a quick take from Mark Hertling on this and the public divorce of the UAE and the Saudis.
About that Rubio / Leo meeting...
The two men exchanged gifts, with Leo giving Rubio a pen carved from olive wood and bearing the coat of arms of the pontificate, which the pope described as representing peace.
Little Marco gave Leo a little crystal football the size of a paperweight engraved with the U.S. State Department seal, joking that he was aware that the Pope was "a baseball guy", referencing Leo's Chicago White Sox fandom...
“I know you’re a baseball guy, but I mean it has the seal of the State Department,” Rubio told him.
The pope's reaction? "Wow. Okay."
Pure class, that Rubio. Just like his boss.
But I don't know why he didn't give the Pope a bit more useful gift than an egg-sized paperweight. He could have followed his fellow Trump administration member and icon of class Kash Patel's example of doling out classy swag in the form of bottles of his own privately labeled bourbon as gifts...
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/05/kash-patel-fbi-bourbon/687066/
Because I rather expect that by the time Little Marco was done with his visit to the Vatican, the pope was in need of a good stiff drink.
I keep reminding myself I should be saying "Wow. Okay." to everything. It's a great example.
If it's good enough for the Pope...!
A better gift would've been a signed baseball from the Sox!
RE: Wind Energy Industry
For decades Republicans railed on about how regulations strangle industries and innovation. Who'd have thought that, in the end, it would be them pulling the noose tight to choke the lights out?
That's a great point. I hadn't actually considered the irony of how they're planning to choke wind power out.
We all knew that was going to happen. We all knew ranting about regulations was just insisting they have the right to pollute and monopolize.
And they railed against the government picking winners and losers in business. Now they pay people to stay out of a certain business.
And the "winners" they pick are complete losers...Spirit Airlines!? lol. Thank god the board/shareholders knew better than to get in it with Trump et al.
I doubt Trump’s ramblings to children who don’t yet vote will change the perception most of his followers have of him — it is doubtful most are even watching these events. What is changing people’s minds is not delivering on what they thought he would do. Or in the case of the Iran war going against what he had explicitly promised. His polling numbers in these areas are often worse than his aggregate. Had he delivered on his promises and still behaved this way, his polling wouldn’t be in the toilet. The stove may not be hot enough that it is searing off flesh, but it has shall we say, become uncomfortable. A trickle here and there can make all the difference and one can see the outlines of what could become a stampede.