Drink up
What’s left of Donald Trump’s “very good brain” is not going to last another three years. “Dangerous” is how Slovakia’s prime minister reportedly described Trump’s mental state. (Is there a betting line on whether his brain or body gives out first?) “Speculation about his fitness for office is rampant; armchair physicians have given him months and sometimes even days to live,” New York magazine reported Monday. Trump was flanked by two doctors when the magazine’s Ben Terris arrived for the interview. His instability is on display almost daily now.
A Daily Beast headline this morning reads, “Sleepless Trump, 79, Launches Manic 6AM Post-a-Minute Rampage.” To wit:
The president fired off almost 31 posts around 6AM Thursday on everything from his prospective invasion of Greenland to his long-running gripes against Barack Obama and his thoroughly debunked claims the 2020 election was rigged.
“TRUMP WON BIG,” Trump wrote of those results. “Crooked Election!”
Much of the MAGA leader’s early morning vitriol appears to have been prompted by the FBI’s raid Wednesday of an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, in search of evidence of widespread voter fraud nearly six years ago.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, was present at the site for the search.
Tulsi? That’s another story. at 7:14 a.m. ET, the Beast flagged Trump’s post rampage as “a developing story,” so he’s likely not done.
It is clear that Trump’s fixation on possessing Greenland, on the 2020 election in Georgia, on his gaudy ballroom and more indicate that he’s checked out on running the executive branch. Deputy Chief of Staff, Shadow President Stephen “Trump’s Brain” Miller is running the show. And directing Trump’s near-pogrom against immigrants.
“It’s just that this is all I care about,” Miller told a White House meeting on immigration policy in November 2019. “I don’t have a family. I don’t have anything else. This is my life.” That’s about that time Miller got engaged to Katie Waldman, so make of that what you will.
Miller is backing away from “the recent fatal shootings in Minneapolis and the administration’s miscalculated response,” according to CNN this morning. He’s described as micromanaging Trump’s deportation program and insistent on underlings delivering on his quotas. He’s known to call Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem multiple times a day “to provide guidance and direction on how Trump’s immigration agenda is being executed,” CNN reports:
Miller, a former Senate aide who has long been fixated on immigration policy, joined Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign during its early stages, and was the rare White House aide to serve the full four years of his first term. He has become even more powerful during Trump’s second term, weighing in on a wide range of issues as Trump and his aides have sought to transform Washington.
This leaves Miller’s sleepy boss more time to focus on important presidential matters like his grievances and firing off angry “Truths.” (His very good brain obviously was not done at 7:14 a.m. ET):
All of this, Digby observed on Wednesday, points to a presidency hollowed out and fading. What’s more, Trump is surrounded by aides who sound like “brainwashed soldiers in ‘The Manchurian Candidate.’” The 25th Amendment is not coming to save us.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is worried that they’ve started sounding like characters from “Dr. Strangelove” and that we are the closest we’ve ever been to catastrophe.
It is now 85 seconds to midnight
A year ago, we warned that the world was perilously close to global disaster and that any delay in reversing course increased the probability of catastrophe. Rather than heed this warning, Russia, China, the United States, and other major countries have instead become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic. Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, the misuse of biotechnology, the potential threat of artificial intelligence, and other apocalyptic dangers. Far too many leaders have grown complacent and indifferent, in many cases adopting rhetoric and policies that accelerate rather than mitigate these existential risks. Because of this failure of leadership, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board today sets the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to catastrophe.
So drink up. It’s 85 seconds to midnight somewhere.