A man who is erratic, vindictive, volatile, obsessive, a chronic liar
Karen Tumulty at the Post has also noticed Trump’s eccentric methods.
Donald Trump’s presidency has veered onto a road with no centerlines or guardrails.
The president’s accusation Saturday that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had tapped his phone “during the very sacred election process” escalated on Sunday into the White House’s call for a congressional investigation of that evidence-free claim.
The audacious tactic was a familiar one for Trump, who has little regard for norms and conventions. When he wants to change a subject, he often does it by touching a match to the dry tinder of a sketchy conspiracy theory.
This is what I’m saying. His two-step process is “audacious” or just plain bonkers.
- make shit up
- act on the shit you just made up.
People who can throw nukes shouldn’t carry on that way.
But the voice of a U.S. commander in chief carries far greater weight than that of just about anyone else on the planet. Trump’s detractors say the way he uses that platform has worrisome implications that go far beyond the sensation he creates on social media and his ability to dominate the news.
Ya think?
“We have as president a man who is erratic, vindictive, volatile, obsessive, a chronic liar, and prone to believe in conspiracy theories,” said conservative commentator Peter Wehner, who was the top policy strategist in George W. Bush’s White House. “And you can count on the fact that there will be more to come, since when people like Donald Trump gain power they become less, not more, restrained.”
Nor does Trump appear to have a governing apparatus around him that can temper and channel his impulses.
In short he’s a clear and present danger.
“When the president goes off and does what he did within the last few days, of just going ahead and tweeting without checking on things, there’s something wrong. There’s something wrong in terms of the discipline within the White House and how you operate,” Leon Panetta, a White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton and CIA director during the Obama administration, said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
What I’m saying. You don’t just make shit up, or see some unreliable clown make shit up, and treat that as reliable.
Amazing how he has created this dangerous diversion and, to my knowledge, not had a single republican call him on it.
http://farcornercafe.blogspot.com/2017/03/hey-look-over-here.html
I take it from the lack of calls from the Appresident for an inquiry into the aliens held at Roswell that he has yet to see Independence Day.
There’s a part of me wants to read across the poker table and figure, from this latest incredibly silly and embarrassing spectacle that the man is really frightened about something, that maybe this Sessions thing really has him spooked, and, in fact, there’s enough to the larger story he really sees a threat if it gets too much attention. And thus the monkey will again fling faeces, getting it all over himself as much as anyone else, sure, but this is the usual formula, and it does seem to work for him. The spectacle distracts, and he lives to lie another day…
Thing is: this is Trump. I think it possible there’s as much simple madness as method in any given outburst.. He’s craven, calculating, with an instinctive flair for manipulation, even a prestidigitator’s skill with directing attention away from where it is inconvenient to his act, yes, but he’s also got a very broken sense of proportion, a tendency to lose it over the barest slights…
So listen, it’s hard to tell. Might still equally be he’s just a fucking idiot.
I’d conclude tho’: it doesn’t even matter. Same as I had to conclude a while ago dealing with any number of liars selling whichever cult or religion: that you don’t really know their minds doesn’t much change what you _can_ do. I’m awfully curious, of course, what they really believe, what they might say to their mirror on the subject if they thought no one could hear, but it still remains: you can ignore that, and, besides, ignore the pyrotechnics, ignore the bluster, keep after what you _can_ work out, what matters in the real world, beyond their possibly very addled heads. There was or was not explict, illegal collusion here. There was or was not a quid pro quo–favourable terms for black bag work in the election. There were or were not financial transactions involved, influence bought and sold…
I say: ignore the blustering simian’s endless, increasingly clumsy attempts to direct your attention, and keep after those questions. If only to spite his sleazy ass. And send a little cold chill down his huckster’s spine, when he realizes he really only knows these two or three tricks, and those aren’t working anymore.
AJ Milne @#3:
Very good thinking IMHO. Despite his abuse of them, members of the Fourth Estate are inclined to cut the bastard a bit too much slack.
Why does he refer to the “election process” as “sacred”?
That he has shown contempt for it needs no demonstration, but why this insistence on sacralizing a secular institution?
It feels “unpresidented” as they say.
To emotivize it further.
It’s sacred because it brought him to power. Yet another piece of evidence for my theory* that tha Appresident and his people are trying to deify the dolt.
As opposed to a conspiracy theory which by tradition relies on lack of evidence.
And now the game-changer. Trump has probably over-reached himself. Big time.
One impeachment coming up.
And would you like fries with that?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-trump-impeachment-wiretapping-20170306-story.html