The enablers feeding the megalomaniaby digby
So John McCain says he all in on the tax plan. That’s probably that. But he and Corker and the others who have concerns about Trump either aren’t thinking this through or are even more craven than the rest of these craven wingnuts.
In my piece for Salon this morning I wrote about the fact that the Republican congress feels compelled to deliver Trump a win because their base is down the rabbit hole with Trump and they figure they have to join them. But I don’t think these people have fully grasped what it will mean to give Trump this big win.
Exhausted by the Trump presidency? Brace yourself: White House officials expect Trump to be even more outrageous and cocksure in coming months.
What we’re hearing: Officials tell us Trump seems more self-assured, more prone to confidently indulging wild conspiracies and fantasies, more quick-triggered to fight than he was during the Wild West of the first 100 days in office.
Imagine Trump if he signs a huge tax cut into law, which seems likely, amid soaring stocks and rising economic growth.
Imagine if Roy Moore wins in Alabama, which seems likely, too. It surely won’t humble Trump — or hem him in.
He’s like the Incredible Hulk, after the media and Mueller made him mad.We just witnessed the most unthinkable 96 hours of Trump’s reign:He called for a probe of the chairman of NBC News, a boycott of CNN, global skepticism of CNN International, and a public contest to crown the king of Fake News.
He told friends that the “Access Hollywood” tape may have been doctored, and that former President Obama may have been born abroad.
He re-tweeted conspiracy theorists.He unapologetically circulated videos aimed at demeaning an entire religion, Islam. He sent his press secretary out to argue it doesn’t matter if the tapes are fake, because the threat is real.
Be smart: Elected Republicans, at least in public, seem fine with it all. They chuckle and say it’s simply Trump being Trump. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and his staff seem fine with, or at least resigned to, this reality. No one who matters is doing anything but egging him on.
Case in point: Amid all of this, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) calls Trump “one of the best presidents I’ve served under.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) gushed that he’s never seen Trump in finer form than digging into the tax bill this week.
Joe Scarborough needs to talk to his pals in the GOP about these concerns and ask them if it’s really a good idea to feed his megalomania with this grotesque tax cut:
“The problem, Mika, is that we are not fine in this country,” Scarborough said.
“I said America will be strong. We will survive this. But right now, at this particular moment — and we will get to this in a moment with Richard Haas, we are headed towards a nuclear showdown, most insiders say it matches everything we’ve heard from inside the administration, we are closer to war on the Korean peninsula that most Americans know, we said this months ago, we will have a ground war, they’ve believed that inside the White House for a very long time.
“Yet, he seems completely detached from reality. We had a New York Times and Washington Post piece saying so a couple of days ago: if this is not what the 25th Amendment was drafted for… I would like the cabinet members to serve America. You know you don’t serve Donald J. Trump, scam developer, scam, you know, Trump University proprietor. Reality TV show host, you don’t represent him. You represent 320 million people whose lives are literally in your hands and we are facing a showdown with a nuclear power and you have somebody inside the White House, somebody at the New York Daily News says is mentally unfit, people close to him say is mentally unfit, people close to him during the campaign told me had early stages of dementia.
“Now listen, you can get mad at me,” he said. “You can say it’s not okay to say, but it is reality.
“When are we supposed to say this — after the first nuclear missile goes, is that when it’s proper to bring this up in polite society?
“Tell me. General Mattis, when is it polite to bring this up in polite society? Rex Tillerson, when is this the right time to talk about a mentally unstable president in the White House and a nuclear showdown with another unstable madman in North Korea? Is it after the first nuclear missiles fly? What exactly is the right time, Steve Mnuchin?
“Mike Pence, guess what, Republicans want you to be president. The Republicans in the House would love you to be president of the United States. You know why? Because you’re stable.
“And here’s the thing. Everybody around Donald Trump knows he’s not stable. Everybody around Donald Trump knows he’s not stable,” he emphasized. “Everybody. And yet, this continues.”