He’s a tried and true Trumper and I’m sure he believes that Ukraine is responsible for election interference rather than Russia. That’s what Putin told Trump and now half the GOP (at least) believes it. I seriously doubt he meant to say Russia, considering Trump’s fealty to Vladimir Putin. He didn’t misspeak.
Some Republicans know otherwise. But will they have the nerve to defy Dear Leader? I’m not so sure:
From Jason Statler (LOLGOP) at the I Know How Much You Care substack:
Historian Thomas Zimmer, who puts out the Democracy Americana newsletter and co-hosts the “Is This Democracy” podcast, has been writing and talking extensively about the significance of Project 2025. This week on my earlyworm podcast “How are you feeling about democracy?” he told me the two main goals of Project 2025:
That diagnosis is we were not ready in 2016/17. We didn’t have the plans. We didn’t have the expertise and we didn’t have the personnel. And this must not happen again, right?
The two big lessons they have drawn from this experience is a) we need to have more of this planning operation beforehand. We need to have our plans ready. We need to have the personnel ready. But also b) we need to purge everyone who put the brakes on what we wanted to do the last time around
Thomas and I had a great conversation about how much of this is coming from Trump and how much of this is the GOP establishment trying to define MAGA to make sure they get what they want out of Trump, whose first presidency failed to transform anything but the federal judiciary. That’s a lot! But not enough for the primal forces of nature behind America’s right wing.
You should read Zimmer’s three-part series on Project 2025. And you should also read the Foreword of Project 2025’s report on pages 33-49, as he recommends.
But if you aren’t going to do any of that, just read one sentence of Project 2025. In fact, you already did. It’s the title of this post:
But the Dobbs decision is just the beginning.
I keep hearing Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts) saying, “Yes, of course they’re serious… ”
How serious? Statler adds, “But don’t believe me or Trump. Believe the entire Republican establishment.”
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The U.S. is still processing the Civil War and its aftermath over 150 years later. When I arrived from the Midwest as a kid, southerners still tossed around yankee as a slur. Israel hasn’t had even a century to process the Holocaust and isn’t done. Now Israelis have to process Oct. 7. I’m not optimistic where this will go near term:
Six months after Oct. 7, Israelis are struggling to recover their bearings, their core, their belief that Jews are safe in Israel.
In Israel’s south and north, more than 120,000 people have been evacuated, their neighborhoods transformed into front lines. The homes sit empty, toys still scattered in front yards.
In the southern kibbutzim, where 3,000 Hamas-led fighters launched a surprise assault on that indelible Saturday morning, the residents return not to live but to serve as guides for visitors from abroad. They give heart-rending tours, recounting how 1,200 people were slaughtered and 253 hostages were dragged into Gaza, according to Israeli government figures.
Evacuees fear that their communities are becoming places frozen in time and loss. They worry that if no solution is found for them — if security is not restored along the borders they share with their enemies — the rest of the country will remain exposed, in a permanent state of existential danger.
Existential danger is going around, real and imagined. Donald Trump is hyping “stranger danger” at every rally and speech. Scary, scary brown people are coming! Diseased animals! They kill the women and rape the men!
The song is as familiar as the intractable animosities:
There is nationwide support for the military’s punishing war against Hamas, which has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says most of the dead are women and children.
The images from Gaza — of shattered cities, families killed together in their homes, malnourished children — do not often appear on the nightly news here. Most of the world thinks Israel has gone too far. Most Israelis don’t think they’ve gone far enough.
Here in the U.S., we worry that Trump is the real danger, and gun culture has gone too far. His cult wants to go further and, like him, rejoices “in the suffering of those they hate and fear.” They are at war too.
Trump, by the way, shared an article that dismisses concerns about his lack of character and values (via Meidas Touch):
“We shouldn’t much care whether our commander-in-chief is a real conservative, whether he is a role model for children or says lots of silly things, or whether he is modest or dignified. What we should care about is whether he knows we are in a war, knows who the enemy is, and knows how to win. Trump does.
Hint: You are the enemy.
Trump’s shared article also turns the fear that voters have of Trump becoming “another Hitler” or a “dictator” into a positive “reason for hope.” The writer says Trump’s enemies “rightly fear” what he and his party will accomplish, calling it a “counterrevolution.” Kind of sounds like an insurrection:
“His enemies hate him with an indescribable fierceness. “Another Hitler,” they say, “elect him and he will be a dictator.” We should take this hysteria as reason for hope. The America-haters rightly fear that he and his party are on the threshold of a successful counterrevolution.”
I’m confused by this America-hater thing. The American Revolution birthed a democratic republic on this continent. And a Trump counterrevolution would do … what exactly? Or have they even thought that far ahead?
It’s all very exhausting.
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Depending on your worldview, this coming Monday’s super-hyped solar eclipse may be interpreted as: a). A sign of the impending apocalypse, b). A sign that once in a blue moon, the moon blows in and obscures the sun, giving humanity the impression (for a few heart stopping moments) that the apocalypse has, in fact, arrived, or c). A dollar sign for event promoters, hoteliers, tow truck drivers, and people who sell cheap cardboard sunglasses.
I know. I’m a cynical bastard.
If the “Great North American Eclipse” forces people to tear themselves away from their 5 inch iPhone screen to gaze up at The Big Sky, and ponder the awesomeness and vastness of the cosmos (and most importantly, humankind’s relative insignificance in the grand scheme of things)…then I’m for it (I Googled “can you view the eclipse with a…” and right after “mirror”, “sunglasses” and “welding mask”, there it was- friggin’ “iPhone”).
Do me a favor. If you’re lucky enough to make it through the horrendous traffic and wriggle through the madding crowd to snag a perfect observation point in one of the areas that will experience totality…don’t view it through a 5-inch screen…LOOK at it! Utilize some form of eye protection, of course, but experience the ACTUAL PHENOMENON! Thanks.
After all, as Carl Sagan observed:
“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”
BTW, here’s evolutionary perspective on why we sophisticated, technically-advanced humanoids still get the tiniest little lizard brain-fueled twitch when Big Light Go Away:
With that in mind, please enjoy this special mixtape that I have assembled to accompany the solar system’s ultimate Laserium show (don’t worry-I didn’t forget the Floyd, man!).
The Rolling Stones- “2000 Light Years from Home”
Paul Weller- “Andromeda”
Tommy Keene- “Astronomy”
The Orb- “Backside of the Moon”
Kate Bush- “The Big Sky”
Soundgarden- “Black Hole Sun”
Pink Floyd- “Brain Damage/Eclipse”
Crosby, Stills, & Nash- “Dark Star”
The Ian Gillian Band- “Five Moons”
Moxy- “Moon Rider”
King Crimson- “Moonchild”
Nick Drake- “Pink Moon”
Elton John- “Rocket Man”
David Bowie- “Space Oddity”
Liz Phair- “Stars and Planets”
Yes- “Starship Trooper”
Bonnie Hayes- “Total Eclipse of the Heart”
The Church- “Under the Milky Way”
Paul McCartney & Wings- “Venus + Mars”
Gamma- “Voyager”
More reviews at Den of Cinema
— Dennis Hartley
Trump’s making us all crazy and we have to resist:
The 2024 election has become a kind of waking nightmare in which many of us stare at Donald Trump as he unleashes some new attack on any number of targets: a judge’s daughter, immigrants, the rule of law, American national security, the Constitution. And we blink and shake our heads, stunned to think that many of our fellow citizens are eager to put this autocratic ignoramus back in the White House.
In a more normal time in American life, people had to leave politics for having a nanogram of Trump’s baggage. Think of the late Senator Thomas Eagleton, the 1972 Democratic vice-presidential pick who had to drop out of the race because he’d been treated for depression. The idea—how old-fashioned it seems now—was that America could not risk any possible mental-health issues not only in the president, but even in the person next in the line of succession. Today, however, we have a former president who exhibits all kinds of signs of a disordered personality—and yet the big worry among many voters (and too much of the media) is whether his opponent is missing a step because he’s roughly 42 months older than Trump.
All of this is enervating and exhausting. But that’s the point: Trump is succeeding because he is, to use Steve Bannon’s infamous expression, seeking to “flood the zone with shit.” Trump’s opponents are flummoxed by how he provokes one new outrage on top of another, and each time they believe he’s finally—finally—gone too far. Bombarding the public space with deranged statements and dangerous threats, however, is not a mistake; it’s a strategy.
By overwhelming people with the sheer volume and vulgarity of his antics, Trump and his team are trying to burn out the part of our brains that can discern truth from fiction, right from wrong, good from evil. His campaign’s goal is to turn voters into moral zombies who can no longer tell the difference between Stormy and Hunter or classified documents and personal laptops, who cannot parse what a “bloodbath” means, who no longer have the ability to be shocked when a political leader calls other human beings “animals” and “vermin.”
Trump isn’t worried that all of this will cause voters to have a kind of mental meltdown: He’s counting on it. He needs ordinary citizens to become so mired in moral chaos and so cognitively paralyzed that they are unable to comprehend the disasters that would ensue if he returns to the White House.
He points out that the polls show that it’s working, that millions are in a “fugue state called ‘undecided'” as if the past eight years never happened.
He acknowledges how hard it is to stay engaged. I feel that. Sometimes it makes me physically ill to watch him and seeing his cult followers and listening to what they say makes me profoundly depressed. I’m stunned that he’s still a threat after all we’ve seen. But Nichols is right:
But to ignore Trump is a mistake. To dismiss him as an incompetent clown is dangerous. Voters who care about democracy, who care about the future of freedom in America and around the world, must steel themselves to stay in the political process. We do not need to explode over every attempt to bait and troll us. Instead, we can let every one of his manic outbursts increase our resolve to speak clearly and plainly in defense of our system of government and our democratic culture—especially to family and friends who might be treading water in the ever-filling Trump septic pool.
…Think of how previous generations engaged with politics: by reading a newspaper, watching an hour of news, and talking with friends and neighbors and other citizens in their community. When I was a boy, Americans managed to confront immense questions of national importance without withdrawing into comfort zones and information silos.
Now we face an existential threat to our democracy. Perhaps we might think about how to revive the civic practices and sensibilities—especially staying informed without becoming overwhelmed or falling into despair—that got us through those earlier crises.
He adds this advice, which I think is good:
Many people assume that folks like me who write about politics are news junkies. They think we dive into the cable shows in the morning and lull ourselves to sleep at night with the latest podcasts. Yes, I pay more attention to the news (and to books about politics, and other sources) than do most people, and sometimes—during a crisis or a big event when I know I’ll have to write—I do, in fact, just stay glued to my TV and my laptop. But otherwise, that level of news consumption is not healthy. I don’t do it, and neither should you.
You might think that, come 5 p.m., I am immersed in cable news. (Hey, sometimes I’m on those shows, and sure, there are days when I watch for hours.) But let me put in a word here for indulging in regular mental breaks. In my case, as many of you know, that means vintage television: Although I enjoy catching up on the news over dinner, more often you’ll find me chuckling with my wife over the clipped, staccato dialogue of Adam-12 or having a laugh with a rerun of Cheers. (“Hey, what’s happening, Norm?” “Well, it’s a dog-eat-dog world, Sammy, and I’m wearing Milk-Bone underwear.”)
If you’re going to make it to November, stay up to date, but don’t forget to unplug now and then. (Reading The Atlantic regularly, of course, is a great way to stay informed.) Few of us are required to have instantaneous knowledge of the day’s events; we can catch up on the news in various ways once or twice a day. Give yourself a break. You’re going to need it.
I too am a news junkie but I do what he does. I’d lose my mind if I stayed glued to developments 24/7. I do write late at night three times a week but I always turn it off in the evening. I find that nordic noirs never fail to cheer me up. And I do this even though it’s my job to follow this stuff closely. Checking in once or twice a day is enough for any normal person. But everyone needs to stay engaged. We can’t let this monster win by turning us into moral zombies. We just can’t.
If you wonder why so many Republicans are now backing Vladimir Putin and are hostile to Ukraine in its fight to remain a free sovereign country, you don’t have to look much farther than the fact that they are members of a cult that worships a man who seems to have an unusual affinity for Valdimir Putin. That certainly informs the cultists’ beliefs. But just as important is the right wing media’s eager dissemination of Russian talking points. Even some Republicans are becoming alarmed:
The most striking example came this week. In an interview with Puck News’s Julia Ioffe, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) — none other than the GOP chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — flat-out said that Russian propaganda had “infected a good chunk of my party’s base.”
McCaul suggested conservative media was to blame.
“There are some more nighttime entertainment shows that seem to spin, like, I see the Russian propaganda in some of it — and it’s almost identical [to what they’re saying on Russian state television] — on our airwaves,” McCaul said.
He also cited “these people that read various conspiracy-theory outlets that are just not accurate, and they actually model Russian propaganda.”
Asked which Republicans specifically he was talking about, McCaul said it was “obvious,” before staff intervened and asked that the conversation go off the record.
These comments are the most significant to date, but they’re not the only ones.
A GOP impasse over additional funding for Ukraine’s defense against Russia — combined recently with Tucker Carlson’s deeply weird promotion of Russia and Trump’s comments about not defending NATO allies from Moscow — has apparently occasioned some self-reflection among Republicans about their colleagues and allies:
Former vice president Mike Pence, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and a top aide to Sen. Todd Young (R-Ill.) have warned their party against serving as apologists for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Recent presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Trump’s comments about not defending NATO allies, among others, “empower Putin.”
And Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) shot back at criticism from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) about Cornyn’s support for Ukraine, urging Paxton to “spend less time pushing Russian propaganda.”
Around the same time, former congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said there is now “a Putin wing of the Republican Party.”
Of course, they’ve known about this for a long time, haven’t they?
House GOP leaders in 2016 privately joked about Trump being compromised by Russia, as later reported by The Washington Post.
The day after The Post broke the news that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee, then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) quipped that perhaps Russia had gotten Democrats’ opposition research about Trump.
“There’s two people, I think, Putin pays,” McCarthy added, “[Rep. Dana] Rohrabacher and Trump.” (Rohrabacher was an openly pro-Russian Republican from California.)
Then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) quickly tried to steer the conversation in another direction and urged people to be discreet.
Trump managed to convince most of the country that there really wasn’t anything wrong with Russia helping his campaign because the Mueller investigation didn’t find that Trump directly conspired with them. The fact that one of his campaign managers, a man in hock to Russian oligarchs who had been working for Russian puppets for years, was handing campaign information to a Russian agent, never really penetrated because he managed to flood the zone with BS. It’s still one of the most shocking examples of campaign treachery in American history. And you can bet that it’s being repeated in dozens of different ways.
Half the world’s dictators are doing everything they can to get that half-wit back in power because they know that he’s completely incompetent and subject to flattery. Republicans know this too and they’re going along with it.
And Trump and his henchmen are lying about it:
Former President Donald Trump picked up a phone to pressure a Nebraska state senator to revive a winner-take-all system of awarding its Electoral College votes for president, sources told the Nebraska Examiner on Friday.
Trump, the sources said, called State Sen. Tom Brewer, who chairs the State Legislature’s Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, and urged him to take action to get a winner-take-all bill up for debate in the waning days of the 2024 session.
Four working days remain in the 60-day session.
Brewer, the sources said, responded that it doesn’t work that way. The deadline is past to vote a bill out of a committee and get it passed this year. In addition, the Speaker of the Legislature on Friday said it’s also too late to amend a bill into another bill.
Trump then reportedly told Brewer, who is term-limited this year, that his political career was over.
Brewer, 65, is a decorated military veteran who represents Nebraska’s Sandhills area.
When asked about the call Friday evening, Chris LaCivita, the co-manager of the Trump campaign, said Trump “absolutely, 110% did not speak with anyone in the State of Nebraska in the last six weeks.”
Brewer, when asked about the call initially, told the Examiner that it was a private conversation and he would not comment. Later, when told a news story was going to be posted, the senator texted that he would deny there was a conversation.
Three state senators said they had heard the story of the call directly from Brewer. They spoke to the Examiner only on the condition that they not be named for fear of reprisals.
The call was the culmination of a weeklong pressure campaign by Republicans, fueled in large part on social media from a conservative talk show host, to persuade Nebraska lawmakers to throw out the state’s 33-year-old law to award electoral votes.
They’re all in on it:
Gov. Jim Pillen joined the arm-twisting effort Tuesday, calling on the officially nonpartisan Legislature to take up a bill to return to winner-take-all, which is the system used in 48 states. Trump followed that with a post on social media, praising Pillen.
“Governor Jim Pillen of Nebraska, a very smart and popular Governor, who has done some really great things, came out today with a very strong letter in support of returning Nebraska’s Electoral Votes to a Winner-Take-All System,” Trump said on social media platform Truth Social. “Most Nebraskans have wanted to go back to this system for a very long time, because it’s what 48 other States do – It’s what the Founders intended, and it’s right for Nebraska. Thank you Governor for your Bold leadership. Let’s hope the Senate does the right thing. Nebraskans, respectfully ask your Senators to support this Great Bill!”
They aren’t going to quit:
LaCivita, the Trump campaign manager, said the former president is still “100% committed” to getting Nebraska law changed, though the opportunity to do that during the regular 2024 session is “diminishing.”
“But a special session is a possibility,” he added. “It’s what a vast majority of Nebraskans support.”
I think it’s obvious LaCivita is lying. This is exactly what Trump has done in the past (Zelensky, Raffensperger etc.) and there is no reason to believe he didn’t do it this time since a whole bunch of people said the recipient of the threatening call told them about it right after it happened. That man is a coward for failing to come forward especially since he’s term limited out. But then Trump’s cult members are aggressive and sometimes dangerous so he knows that it’s risky if he wants to maintain the status in GOP circles that he has had. Nonetheless, this ex-marine is no longer a patriot no matter what he once did in the service.
Hopefully there will not be the appetite to hold a special session to fulfill Dear Leader’s rigging scheme.
I saw John Kasich, an MSNBC contributor, say last week that while he doesn’t agree with doing this so late in the game, it’s also true that Democrats changed the rules in 2020 so… both sides are wrong. You may recall that the reason states changed some election rules was to allow people the ability to vote during the deadly pandemic without killing themselves. They certainly didn’t change any of the electoral college rules which the Trump people did after the election and continue to attempt today. But hey… both sides, amirite?
I understand that we are supposed to respect people who are voting for Trump because it’s very rude not to. But how can anyone respect people who would vote for this?
How about this? Trump appeared on Hugh Hewitt’s show and said this:
HH: Now you have said you’ll debate him anywhere, anytime. Do you think he’ll agree to any debates?
DJT: Yeah, anywhere, anytime.
HH: Do you think he’ll agree?
DJT: I don’t think so, but I hope he does. I think what happened is you know that white stuff that they happened to find, which happened to be cocaine in the White House, I don’t know, I think something’s going on there, because I watched this State of the Union, and he was all jacked up at the beginning. By the end, he was fading fast. There’s something going on there. I want to debate. And I think debates, with him, at least, should be drug tested. I want a drug test.
HH: Mr. President, are you suggesting President Biden’s using cocaine?
DJT: I don’t know what he’s using, but that was not, hey, he was higher than a kite. And by the way, it was the worst, it was the worst address I’ve ever seen, the State of the Nation. I’ll tell you, State of the Union, that’s not State of the Union, because he doesn’t represent us properly. That, I can tell you. But he’s obviously, he’s being helped in some way, because most of the time, he looks like he’s falling asleep. And all of a sudden, he walked up there and did a poor job. But he was all jacked up.
As Dan Pfeiffer reported in his newsletter, the press ignored this to discuss Trump’s “policy” on Gaza (which was that Israel needs to “finish the war fast” because “they’re losing the PR War.”)
As Pfeiffer notes:
When it comes to Trump — and only Trump, the press has abandoned Roger Ailes’ “Orchestra Pit Theory of Politics,” As the former GOP consultant turned Fox News honcho/overall terrible human explained:
If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guy falls into the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?
Trump delivers his speeches from the orchestra pit, but the press covers the rare moments he climbs out and gets back on stage.
The only “news” show to properly cover this heinous accusation was Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live:
The Washington Post took a look at what we know about the state of Trump’s health:
As former president Donald Trump escalated his attacks on President Biden’s health and mental fitness last fall, Trump released the first updated report on his own condition in more than three years.
This assessment, however, stood in stark contrast to the relatively detailed reports released by the White House during his term. Instead of specifics like blood pressure and medications, the letter had just three paragraphswithout specific numbers proclaiming that Trump was in “excellent health” and had “exceptional” cognitive ability. It did not disclose Trump’s weight.
And after relying on a longtime personal doctor and then twoWhite House physicians who had attested to his well-being in office, Trump turned to an unknown on the national stage to providethis report: Bruce A. Aronwald, a 64-year-old osteopathic physician from New Jersey — and a longtime member of Trump’s Bedminster golf club.
The concierge doctor and fixture at Bedminster declined to be interviewed and said there’s no reason to release any more details of the 78 year old candidate’s health because he is strong physically and sharp cognitively. So that’s that apparently, which only leads to more speculation about what’s going on with him (because something is…)
Biden has released a much more comprehensive report on his health with all the details about his medications, physical impairments like sleep apnea and “stiff gait” giving a fuller picture of the 81 year old.
They’re both old and both appear to be physically healthy. Trump, for some reason, is the only one who refuses to have a real physical and release the details. You have to wonder why. But then remember the history:
Trump has long relied on personal physicians and White House doctors to respond to — and sometimes insulate him from — questions about his health.
In 2015, h etweeted that “as a presidential candidate, I have instructed my longtime doctor to issue, within two weeks, a full medical report — it will show perfection.”
A full medical report was not immediately forthcoming. Instead, the following day,Trump’s then-physician, Harold Bornstein, signed a four-paragraph letter that said Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” It provided only a few metrics such as blood pressure and a PSA test for prostate screening.
Bornstein, a gastroenterologist who died in 2021, later told CNN that Trump “dictated that whole letter. I didn’t write that letter. I just made it up as I went along.”
As the 2016 campaign developed, Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, released a detailed medical report and challenged Trump to do the same.
After pressure mounted on Trump to release more information, Bornstein conducted another examination and, in September 2016, Trump went on “The Dr. Oz Show” and, with a dramatic flourish, pulled out a new report for Oz to read. That letter included more information about blood tests and other metrics than the first letter, and said Trump was in “excellent physical health.”
In early 2017, Bornstein told the New York Times that Trump took drugs for hair loss, rosacea and high cholesterol. As a result of that revelation, he said he was told he was no longer under consideration to be White House physician. And two days after that article was published, Bornstein later told NBC News, a White House official and two others conducted a “raid” on his office to obtain the president’s medical records, which he said made him feel “raped, frightened and sad.” The White House responded at the time that it was “standard operating procedure” to obtain the documents and denied that it was a raid.
Then there was Dr Feelgood Jackson, recently revealed to have been dispensing massive amounts of narcotics during the Trump administration:
During his presidency, Trump’s first White House physician, Ronny Jackson, appeared in the White House briefing room in 2018 to announce that tests performed at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center found Trump to be in excellent health.
The results were detailed, showing that Trump’s weight had increased from 236 to 239 pounds, which qualified him as borderline obese for a man of 6-3. Jackson also said that Trump had scored a 30 out of 30 on a basic cognitive test designed to detect early signs of cognitive impairment.Jackson said nothing was being withheld from the tests, and he said that Trump’s release was more than any president before him had done. Jackson recommended that Trump try to lose 10 to 15 pounds.
But somephysicians and analysts at the time said the report also showed Trump had an increased risk of heart problems — underscoring why releasing detailed results can provide important information beyond a general statement. CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, noted that a CT scan showed that Trump’s coronary calcium score was 133, up from 98 in 2013 and 34 in 2009. Gupta wrote that a score over 100 “indicates plaque is present and that the patient has heart disease,” and also noted Trump had increased cholesterol levels. Jackson said in releasing the report that he had increased Trump’s cholesterol-lowering medication, in addition to his recommendations about diet. (No numbers about cholesterol or calcium were released in the latest report.)
Jackson, who is now a GOP congressmanrepresenting Texas, has been an outspoken supporter of Trump and critic of Biden’s health. The Navy in 2022 demoted him from retired rear admiral to retired captain after a Pentagon’s inspector general’s report that substantiated allegations about his inappropriate behavior as White House physician, The Post recently reported.
And when Trump caught COVID because he refused to cancel appearances or wear a mask:
[Jackson’s successor Dr. Sean] Conley supported Trump’s usage of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, during the coronavirus pandemic. Conley wrote a May 18, 2020, memo in which he said he had discussed the evidence for and against the use of hydroxychloroquine and “concluded the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks.”
Then, after Trump contracted covid-19 in the fall of 2020, Conley made statements that played down the severity of Trump’s illness that were later contradicted by other White House officials and subsequent reporting. While Conley wrote in a memo that Trump was recovering and had “no symptoms,” then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters that Trump was doing worse than Conley had let on. Conley later said that “it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn’t necessarily true. … The fact of the matter is that he’s doing really well.”
This latest exam by the concierge doctor was held in September, 2023.
I think Trump is probably physically fine. He seems to have a robust constitution. But he is not mentally well and it’s obvious. I doubt that the concierge doctor is very qualified to make an accurate assessment of that. But it’s really not necessary. There’s something wrong with him. He’s always rambled and said stupid things. But now he’s exhibiting some behavior that is just plain weird. Doctors who have seen it think it may have been a TIA.
I think Trump’s incoherence has a lot more salience now that the right has been slagging Biden for his alleged dementia. They opened the door to a closer look at how daft he really is and how much worse it’s gotten.
As long as people see it. Rachel Leingang writes about this in the Guardian today:
Watching a Trump speech in full better shows what it’s like inside his head: a smorgasbord of falsehoods, personal and professional vendettas, frequent comparisons to other famous people, a couple of handfuls of simple policy ideas, and a lot of non sequiturs that veer into barely intelligible stories.
Curiously, Trump tucks the most tangible policy implications in at the end. His speeches often finish with a rundown of what his second term in office could bring, in a meditation-like recitation the New York Times recently compared to a sermon. Since these policies could become reality, here’s a few of those ideas:
-Instituting the death penalty for drug dealers.
-Creating the “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act”: “If China or any other country makes us pay 100% or 200% tariff, which they do, we will make them pay a reciprocal tariff of 100% or 200%. In other words, you screw us and we’ll screw you.”
-Indemnifying all police officers and law enforcement officials.
-Rebuilding cities and taking over Washington DC, where, he said in a recent speech, there are “beautiful columns” put together “through force of will” because there were no “Caterpillar tractors” and now those columns have graffiti on them.
-Issuing an executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content.
-Moving to one-day voting with paper ballots and voter ID.
This conclusion is the most straightforward part of a Trump speech and is typically the extent of what a candidate for office would say on the campaign trail, perhaps with some personal storytelling or mild joking added in.
But it’s also often the shortest part.
Trump’s tangents aren’t new, nor is Trump’s penchant for elevating baseless ideas that most other presidential candidates wouldn’t, like his promotion of injecting bleach during the pandemic.
But in a presidential race among two old men that’s often focused on the age of the one who’s slightly older, these campaign trail antics shed light on Trump’s mental acuity, even if people tend to characterize them differently than Joe Biden’s. While Biden’s gaffes elicit serious scrutiny, as writers in the New Yorker and the New York Times recently noted, we’ve seemingly become inured to Trump’s brand of speaking, either skimming over it or giving him leeway because this has always been his shtick.
Trump, like Biden, has confused names of world leaders (but then claims it’s on purpose). He has also stumbled and slurred his words. But beyond that, Trump’s can take a different turn. Trump has described using an “iron dome” missile defense system as “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They’ve only got 17 seconds to figure this whole thing out. Boom. OK. Missile launch. Whoosh. Boom.”
These tangents can be part of a tirade, or they can be what one can only describe as complete nonsense.
During this week’s Wisconsin speech, which was more coherent than usual, Trump pulled out a few frequent refrains: comparing himself, incorrectly, to Al Capone, saying he was indicted more than the notorious gangster; making fun of the Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis’s first name (“It’s spelled fanny like your ass, right? Fanny. But when she became DA, she decided to add a little French, a little fancy”).
He made fun of Biden’s golfing game, miming how Biden golfs, perhaps a ding back at Biden for poking Trump about his golf game. Later, he called Biden a “lost soul” and lamented that he gets to sit at the president’s desk. “Can you imagine him sitting at the Resolute Desk? What a great desk,” Trump said.
One muddled addition in Wisconsin involved squatters’ rights, a hot topic related to immigration now: “If you have illegal aliens invading your home, we will deport you,” presumably meaning the migrant would be deported instead of the homeowner. He wanted to create a federal taskforce to end squatting, he said.
“Sounds like a little bit of a weird topic but it’s not, it’s a very bad thing,” he said.
These half-cocked remarks aren’t new; they are a feature of who Trump is and how he communicates that to the public, and that’s key to understanding how he is as a leader.
The New York Times opinion writer Jamelle Bouie described it as “something akin to the soft bigotry of low expectations”, whereby no one expected him to behave in an orderly fashion or communicate well.
Some of these bizarre asides are best seen in full, like this one about Biden at the beach in Trump’s Georgia response to the State of the Union:
“Somebody said he looks great in a bathing suit, right? And you know, when he was in the sand and he was having a hard time lifting his feet through the sand, because you know sand is heavy, they figured three solid ounces per foot, but sand is a little heavy, and he’s sitting in a bathing suit. Look, at 81, do you remember Cary Grant? How good was Cary Grant, right? I don’t think Cary Grant, he was good. I don’t know what happened to movie stars today. We used to have Cary Grant and Clark Gable and all these people. Today we have, I won’t say names, because I don’t need enemies. I don’t need enemies. I got enough enemies. But Cary Grant was, like – Michael Jackson once told me, ‘The most handsome man, Trump, in the world.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Cary Grant.’ Well, we don’t have that any more, but Cary Grant at 81 or 82, going on 100. This guy, he’s 81, going on 100. Cary Grant wouldn’t look too good in a bathing suit, either. And he was pretty good-looking, right?”
Or another Hollywood-related bop, inspired by a rant about Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade’s romantic relationship:
“It’s a magnificent love story, like Gone With the Wind. You know Gone With the Wind, you’re not allowed to watch it any more. You know that, right? It’s politically incorrect to watch Gone With the Wind. They have a list. What were the greatest movies ever made? Well, Gone With the Wind is usually number one or two or three. And then they have another list you’re not allowed to watch any more, Gone With the Wind. You tell me, is our country screwed up?”
He still claims to have “done more for Black people than any president other than Abraham Lincoln” and also now says he’s being persecuted more than Lincoln and Andrew Jackson:
All my life you’ve heard of Andrew Jackson, he was actually a great general and a very good president. They say that he was persecuted as president more than anybody else, second was Abraham Lincoln. This is just what they said. This is in the history books. They were brutal, Andrew Jackson’s wife actually died over it.”
I just have to interject that the only thing he’d heard about Jackson — until Steve Bannon told him that he was just like him — was that he was on the 20 dollar bill. He is, as you know, very, very ignorant. His intelligence is a purely feral and survival instinct. I think many people have forgotten that which is why it’s important to remind them of his inane ramblings during the biggest crisis of his presidency — the pandemic.
Leingang continues:
You not only see the truly bizarre nature of his speeches when viewing them in full, but you see the sheer breadth of his menace and animus toward those who disagree with him.
His comments especially toward migrants have grown more dehumanizing. He has said they are “poisoning the blood” of the US – a nod at Great Replacement Theory, the far-right conspiracy that the left is orchestrating migration to replace white people. Trump claimed the people coming in were “prisoners, murderers, drug dealers, mental patients and terrorists, the worst they have”. He has repeatedly called migrants “animals”.
[…]
And he has turned more authoritarian in his language, saying he would be a “dictator on day one” but then later said it would only be for a day. He’s called his political enemies “vermin”: “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” he said in New Hampshire in late 2023.
At a speech in March in Ohio about the US auto industry he claimed there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost, which some interpreted as him claiming there would be violence if he loses the election.
Trump’s campaign said later that he meant the comment to be specific to the auto industry, but now the former president has started saying Biden created a “border bloodbath” and the Republican National Committee created a website to that effect as well.
It’s tempting to find a coherent line of attack in Trump speeches to try to distill the meaning of a rambling story. And it’s sometimes hard to even figure out the full context of what he’s saying, either in text or subtext and perhaps by design, like the “bloodbath” comment or him saying there wouldn’t be another election if he doesn’t win this one.
But it’s only in seeing the full breadth of the 2024 Trump speech that one can truly understand what kind of president he could become if he won the election.
“It’s easiest to understand the threat that Trump poses to American democracy most clearly when you see it for yourself,” Susan B Glasser wrote in the New Yorker. “Small clips of his craziness can be too easily dismissed as the background noise of our times.”
But if you ask Trump himself, these are just examples that Trump is smart, he says.
“The fake news will say, ‘Oh, he goes from subject to subject.’ No, you have to be very smart to do that. You got to be very smart. You know what it is? It’s called spot-checking. You’re thinking about something when you’re talking about something else, and then you get back to the original. And they go, ‘Holy shit. Did you see what he did?’ It’s called intelligence.”
It’s called dementia.
I hope that everyone takes the time to watch at least one of his rally speeches in full as she advises. I know it’s a painful chore but everyone needs to see one whole speech in order to fully understand how bad it’s gotten. Between the incoherence, the promises of vengeance, the crudeness and the scripted fascism it’s much worse than it was before.