And I’m also sure that Junior and Eric shared them with daddy and came back with his embellishments. There is no way that he just let those two bumblers take the reins.
With this, and Ronna Romney McDaniel declaring the attacks a “great opportunity”—and really everything since Benghazi—it could not be clearer that the GOP salivates for barbarism and human calamity when the president is a Democrat. Utterly ghoulish party. https://t.co/HS5MB1FtvZ
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) October 10, 2023
Note the flat affect when he’s talking about the carnage in Israel. It’s just a lead-in to his renditon of The Snake which he apparently thinks is a good metaphor for the Israel Hamas conflict when in the past it was a metaphor for the border. This is how his addled brain works:
That imbecile is going to be the GOP nominee for president. For the third election in a row.
Here’s more on his speech yesterday when everyone else was watching the horrific events in the Middle East:
In a weekend filled with politicians offering criticisms and condemnations over the state of the world, Donald Trump on Monday had a few.
For the Wall Street Journal editorial page (“globalists”), for windmills (“we see whales washing up on shore”); for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (“He’s fallen like a wounded bird from the skies”) and his indictments (“a great badge of honor”); for transgender athletes (“Have you seen the weightlifting records?”) and even for one of the region’s most cherished institutions: the New England Patriots (“not a good game” Sunday).
The attack on Israel may have been consuming much of official Washington. But in the small auditorium in a performing arts center in Wolfeboro, N.H., where Trump rallied his base of voters on Monday, it was not topic one, two or even 13.
In all, it took Trump over an hour to spend any significant amount of time discussing the fighting that erupted in the Middle East following the murder of an estimated 900 Israelis. Reading from a teleprompter, Trump blamed President Joe Biden for “tossing Israel to the bloodthirsty terrorists,” for reengaging diplomatically with Iran and for not doing enough to support Israel’s president, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Less than four years ago, we had peace in the Middle East,” Trump said. “Today we have an all-out war in Israel and it’s gonna spread quickly. What a difference a president makes. Isn’t it amazing?”
After claiming that Hamas may be infiltrating the U.S.-Mexico border and suggesting, also without evidence, that the group could launch a domestic attack, he reverted back to familiar themes: obliterating the Deep State, attacking Hillary Clinton and preventing World War III.
Trump has never been one to stick to script or to refashion his speeches because of the news of the day. But his riff on Monday suggested he had scant organic interest in the events in Israel and saw little upside in making it part of the primary.
On the latter, he doesn’t appear to be alone. The prospect of a broader war between Hamas militants and Israel could have significant repercussions in the general election, serving as a gauge of Biden’s management of conflict abroad. But in a Republican primary buffeted by an unusual amount of foreign policy — from concerns about China and Ukraine to, now, Israel — it so far appears unlikely to alter the trajectory of the race at all.
“If we’re not at war – at least not directly, troops not committed and that type of thing – it’s not as big an issue,” said Wayne MacDonald, a New Hampshire lawmaker and past state Republican Party chair who supports former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. “Guns and butter, so to speak.”
Immediately after the attack, it seemed possible that the crisis might become a wedge issue among the GOP candidates — deepening the rift between the party’s isolationist and more engagement-oriented strains of foreign policy. Former Vice President Mike Pence, campaigning in Iowa over the weekend, faulted “voices of appeasement like Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis that I believe have run contrary to the tradition in our party that America is the leader of the free world.”
But Pence, polling in single digits, was largely a voice in the wilderness. The rest of the Republican field highlighted the atrocities not to critique each other or demand a more internationalist foreign policy in general, but to attack the current administration.
Trump called Biden, the Democratic president, “weak.” He was “sleeping on the job,” DeSantis said. Christie criticized policies of “appeasement and isolationism,” but did so in a rebuke of Biden, not fellow Republicans. Even Haley, who broke before with Trump on foreign policy, on China and Ukraine, did little to create any distance on the issue with her rivals.
Instead, she drew a connection from Israel to the Southern border.
“I have been terribly worried about the fact that Iran has said the easiest way to get into America is through the southern border,” Haley said on NBC on Sunday. “We have an open border. People are coming through; they’re not being vetted.”
Thaty’s trulythe dumbest take of all. Apparently, we’re supposed to believe that the Iranians have recruited a bunch of Central Americans, converted them to Islamic terrorists and trained them to imitate refugees sp they can carry out a terrorist attack in America. Either that or we’re supposed to believe that Iranians have learned to sperak perfect Spanish and blend in with the Hisp[anic refugees so they can come into the US to carry out terrorist attacks. It’s incredibly stupid. But that’s where we are.
And there are some Republicans who do see the attack on Israel as motivating for the party’s voters. Attendees at Trump’s rally expressed broad support for “our ally” Israel — and universal condemnation of Biden over Hamas’ attacks.
“The blood’s on Biden’s hands,” said Jill Hegner, a Gilford, N.H., Republican who’s “300 percent” with Trump and arrived at the performing arts center at 6:30 a.m. to beat the throngs of thousands of people hoping to snag one of the roughly 100 seats inside.
“Trump, we had no new wars, peace in the Middle East,” Hegner said. “The first thing that Biden did when he got into office was get rid of all of that. It’s unbelievable to me.”
Stephen Stepanek, Trump’s senior adviser in New Hampshire and a former state Republican Party chair, said in a brief interview that “the world was a lot safer when Donald Trump was president.” A yarmulke — a head covering worn by observant Jewish men — dotted the sea of red-and-white “Make America Great Again” baseball caps and “America First” hoodies.
And yet Trump’s supporters in New Hampshire — and GOP voters more broadly — remain more concerned about problems at home than abroad.
When Gallup asks Americans what the most important problem facing the country is today, foreign policy barely registers. Republicans are far more concerned about domestic issues like inflation and immigration — both of which Trump played into on Monday, and both of which elicited far more cheers than talk of trouble abroad.
People leapt to their feet when Trump called to “stop child sexual mutilation” and dismantle the Department of Education. They whipped out their phones not to record Trump’s remarks on the state of the world but to capture his dramatic reading of a poem called “The Snake.” He won applause for talking about how he reopened waters off New England’s coastline for lobstering and was greeted with silence when he said Biden “betrayed” Israel’s leader Netanyahu.
And even as they said America should support Israel, voter after voter who came to hear Trump in New Hampshire decried the United States’ continued financial support of another country locked in a bloody battle: Ukraine.
Dave Urban, a Republican operative and former Trump adviser, described the attack on Israel as a “very fluid dynamic situation which is very sensitive on many fronts,” and suggested there wasn’t much more that Trump could say on the subject.
“He’s already put out his statement,” Urban said. “In his case he’s like, ‘I moved the embassy. I’m the most pro-Israel president we’ve ever had.’ … What’s he going to say that’s going to be politically useful.
He never says anything politically useful so that’s actually refreshingly honest from the Trump campaign.
Jake Tapper: Is there a way for Israel to destroy Hamas without causing massive casualties against the iccocent people of the Gaza strip and roughly a million of them are children?
Marco Rubio: I don’t think Israel can be expected to co-exist or find some diplomatic offramp with these savages. These are people, as you’ve been reporting that deliberately targeted teenage girls, women and children and the elderly, not just for rape and murder and then dumping thei bodies off in the streets of Gaza where the crowds can then defile their lifeless bodies. They’re just horrifying things. We don’t know the full extent of it yet. There’s more to come in the days and weeks ahead. You can’t co-exist with that. They have to be eradicated.
I feel sick.
I watched the official spokesman for the IDF a couple of hours ago and he had the decency to insist that they ere not targeting civilians, that they were concerned about innocent lives being lose and that they were urging civilians to leave and get out of Gaza City (and yes, I know that’s easier said than done but at least he made the gesture.) It’s all awful and I’m sure a lot of what he said was bullshit but at least he wasn’t calling for genocide.
On the other hand:
Just as the Hamas terrorists broke all civilized norms with its attack on unarmed, innocent civilians so too are the Israelis if this is how they’re going to go about responding:
Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant:
"I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly." pic.twitter.com/69VBYtfSFz
— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) October 9, 2023
They are not human animals. They are human, period, and their children are no more responsible for this than the Israeli children who have been killed, kidnapped and terrorised.
Yes, Israel has a right to defend itself. It does not have a right to inflict collective punishment. This is revenge.
American military experts on TV are saying that we are going to see “collateral damage” like we haven’t seen since WWII. And they don’t seem to have a problem with that.
This must not be condoned.
I’m sure Vladimir Putin will be very happy to hear that. No doubt Ukraine has even less chance of support in the current circumstance:
Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.) said Monday that Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s commitment to Israel makes him ideal to return as speaker of the House even if he was just voted out.
In an interview on “Fox & Friends” Duarte called for the House to reelect fellow Californian McCarthy when it reconvenes this week so it can approve military aid to Israel as soon as possible. Without an elected speaker, the House would not be able to vote on a funding package, he said.
“We have one of our strongest allies in the world under attack, and we are dilly-dallying around with a leadership struggle in the House that should have never occurred,” Duarte said, expressing fear that Israel could run short on artillery.
McCarthy said later on Monday he would step in again as speaker if he’s wanted after declaring days earlier he would never run again. “Whatever the conference wants,” he said.
He urged full support for Israel. “I know what it means to have a strong America and a strong relationship with Israel,” he said at a press conference.
[…]
Duarte told host Steve Doocy that McCarthy had the expertise on Israel to lead the GOP-controlled House and that the lower chamber had the votes if a few Israel-supporting Democrats would have a change of heart. He suggested a few Democrats “take a walk” during the vote.
This is a smart play by the McCarthy forces. Support for Israel is a third rail on the right and if McCarthy is seen as the leader who will protect it, I can easily see them getting him back in there.
According this article in Politico, at a meeting of House Republicans on Monday it appeared that a McCarthy restoration is considered a long shot. But then so is everyone else. They are still in serious disarray with everyone angry and upset about what happened. Nobody knows how it’s going to turn out.
Donald Trump must be really pissed that the Hamas attack on Israel over the weekend knocked him off the front pages. Of course, The Gray Lady had seen fit the day before to bury on Page A13 news of Trump blabbering U.S. submarine secrets to his Mar-a-Lago guests.
Remarkable that this story is buried on Page A13 in today’s New York Times. pic.twitter.com/U0F5Ra33Td
— Robert Loerzel (@robertloerzel) October 6, 2023
Digby’s comment on this mental midget is so good you should see it again:
We are in the midst of an international crisis and the putative nominee for the Republican nomination is whining about Forbes Magazine, Stormy Daniels and Rosie O’Donnell. That’s the man Republicans want to put back in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal (which he is blabbing about to his Mar-a-Lago customers.)
The point can’t be made strongly enough. (See what I did?) Thank heavens, Joe Biden is president at a time like this.
Donald “very stable genius” Trump lugs around a visceral fear that somebody, somewhere is laughing at him. Thank the Writers, someone is laughing at Trump once again in late night:
Accounts of the killings and kidnappings from the Israeli border with Gaza are horrific. Especially from the attack on unarmed civilians at a music festival. Americans can easily imagine themselves in a similar situation. Americans were in a similar situation in October six years ago in Las Vegas when a lone gunman murdered 60 concertgoers and wounded over 400. The New York Times has video shot as the attacks began. One striking image from TV accounts shows a destroyed car shot full of holes like Swiss cheese.
Israeli retaliatory airstrikes on the Gaza side of the border are killing and wounding unarmed civilians there, don’t forget. With the district locked down and out of power, Palestinian victims’ stories are trickling out more slowly. Their stories will likely never be told.
I’m not qualified to do more than react. But this clip of retired United States Navy rear admiral John Kirby of the National Security Council choking up on live television is arresting. It’s a sobering image. Why, given daily events in this country, is hard to express.
NSC’s John Kirby chokes up when speaking to @jaketapper about the images coming out of Israel. pic.twitter.com/BkknrKCWPI
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) October 9, 2023
Terrorists are not entering our houses, taking us hostage, and murdering us at point-blank range. But they are by the hundreds shooting up our schools and malls and parades and terrorizing public officials so often that the daily slaughter on our own streets has become background noise.
Jeff Sharlet calls it a slow civil war. He’s not wrong.
Wow.
This would be sad if it weren’t so dangerous:
In a move that could alter the dynamics of the 2024 election, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Monday that he would continue his presidential run as an independent candidate, ending his long-shot pursuit of the Democratic nomination against an incumbent president.
“I am here to declare myself an independent candidate for president of the United States,” Mr. Kennedy told a crowd of supporters outside the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Since announcing his candidacy in April, Mr. Kennedy, 69, has been a sharp critic of Democratic leadership, which he has accused of “hijacking the party machinery” to stifle his challenge to President Biden. He has also said, in interviews and in public appearances, that the party has abandoned its principles and become corrupted.
Running as an independent will entail an expensive, uphill battle to get on the ballot in all 50 states. Last week, Cornel West, a liberal academic and presidential candidate, said he would run as an independent, abandoning his efforts to secure the Green Party’s nomination.
The scion of a liberal political dynasty, Mr. Kennedy has alienated family members and many Democrats with his promotion of conspiracy theories, his rejection of scientific orthodoxies and his embrace of far-right political figures.
Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, has been lionized by a movement that has expanded beyond anti-vaccine sentiments, including opposition to the mandatory vaccination of children, to push back more broadly against state public health measures. In recent years, his open suspicions about the government’s handling of the coronavirus and his criticism of lockdowns and vaccine policies gave him a new platform and earned him popularity among many Americans who wearied of the pandemic.
As a candidate, he has built a base of support made up of disaffected voters across the political spectrum, but some Democrats have worried he poses the biggest threat to their party, fearing that any third-party candidacy could peel off voters from Mr. Biden.
Shortly after Mr. Kennedy entered the race, some polls showed him with up to 20 percent of Democratic support — which was in large part a measure of the desire among some for an alternative to Mr. Biden. Mr. Kennedy’s numbers have sagged in recent months, though his campaign, which dwells as much on nostalgia for his political lineage as it does on skepticism about the scientific and political establishment — continues to appeal to a particular cross-section of skeptical Democrats, political conservatives and independents.
Polls show that he takes more from Democrats than Republicans. But I’m not so sure. Still it’s a needless risk and he and Cornel West and any of the others runningfor third party should step aside. This is a moment that requires people to make a clear choice between the two candidates who have a chance to win not voice a protest.
Note the date of that Truth Social post. He wrote that today. That’s what he’s thinking about right now.
We are in the midst of an international crisis and the putative nominee for the Republican nomination is whining about Forbes Magazine, Stormy Daniels and Rosie O’Donnell. That’s the man Republicans want to put back in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal (which he is blabbing about to his Mar-a-Lago customers.)
******
I highly recommend history professor (and OG blogger) Claire Potter’s newsletter Political Junkie and you should subscribe if you want to read some great political commentaryfrom her and any number of great writers and analysts who write for her. Today she is featuring a great piece about Joe Biden and the “age problem” by Peter Drier the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics at Occidental College:
Many voters, including Democrats, think that 80-year old President Joe Biden is too old to run for re-election. A recent poll from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs found that 77% of Americans (89% of Republicans and 69% of Democrats) thought that, if Biden won re-election, his age would be a problem. In contrast, only 51% of Americans, and 29% of Republicans, said that Donald Trump’s age was a concern. Republican leaders, such as former South Carolina Governor and presidential primary candidate Nikki Haley, are pushing that talking point. They warn that Biden might not be able to serve his entire second term and that the less popular Vice President Kamala Harris would wind up in the Oval Office.
Trump has been more direct, echoing online conspiracists who doctor videos to “prove” that Biden is already too old to be President. Speaking to a group of conservative religious leaders in Washington, D.C. on September 15, Trump called Biden “cognitively impaired.” Then, ironically, he warned that, if re-elected, Biden would lead the country into “World War II.” At another point, he boasted that he was beating President “Obama” (rather than Biden) in the 2024 election polls.
Unintentionally, Trump’s bizarre speech helped illuminate the debate over the two candidates’ ages.
Yes, Biden is the oldest president in American history. And he’s only going to get older. There is no younger candidate emerging, so in November 2024, voters who worry about Biden’s age will likely have to decide between him and Trump, who is three years younger and turned 77 in June. The good news? All signs suggest that Biden is still the best candidate. He is healthier, more vigorous, sharper, smarter, more mentally stable, more knowledgeable about how government works, has a clearer grasp of issues, and is more effective at getting things done than Trump.
First, Biden is healthy. In February, after he underwent a physical exam at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, his personal physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor issued the president a clean bill of health and cleared him to continue fulfilling his duties.
“The president remains fit for duty, and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations,” O’Connor wrote in his report. An echocardiogram showed that Biden’s heart is not only operating normally with no signs of failure, but also showed “excellent functional capacity.”
Like many older people, Biden staves off the effects of age by taking care of his body. During the 2020 campaign, Biden biked regularly on both a traditional bike and a Peloton. Since becoming President, he starts his mornings by working out with weights—often with a trainer, according to the Washington Post. Although Biden likes to indulge in ice cream and chocolate chip cookies, he closely watches his diet.
Of course, this doesn’t stave off everything associated with aging. Before he took office, Biden had several localized non-melanoma skin cancers removed, a result of spending a great deal of time in the sun. And from time to time, he falls. In June, after handing out diplomas at the United States Air Force Academy graduation ceremony, he tripped over a black sandbag, got back up and walked back to his seat. Although the incident generated a flurry of media stories, encouraged by the Republican operatives who want to highlight Biden’s age, by all accounts, he was fine.
Of course, many younger Americans also have cancerous cells removed. Similarly, many people across the age spectrum occasionally trip and then get up, but few do so in the national spotlight. Gerald Ford, who was much younger and was an All-American football player at the University of Michigan, tripped a few times while serving as president, including tumbling down Air Force One stairs in 1975 when he was a spry 61-year-old. On Saturday Night Live, comedian Chevy Chase frequently made fun of Ford’s mishaps. But the joke was about Ford’s alleged clumsiness, not his age, whether he was too physically infirm to govern, or unlikely to finish his term of office.
Many Americans have also noticed that Biden sometimes slurs his words when he speaks, but attributing this to his age is a mistake. In fact, it is a feature of his long battle with stuttering, not a symptom of any decline in mental or physical capacity. Most stutterers outgrow the disability in childhood, but others, like Biden, continue to struggle with it in adulthood. This is a topic he’s been very candid about and has used to mentor and encourage young people with the same speech disorder.
Biden’s occasional verbal gaffes also have nothing to do with his mental sharpness. Throughout his political career—he was elected to the Senate in 1972, at the age of 29—he’s been prone to blurting things out that he later regrets, often in response to a question that he answered too quickly.
Biden’s capacity to navigate an executive schedule should also not be a concern. During the 2020 campaign, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, he didn’t travel often, but since taking office he’s had a rigorous travel schedule at home and abroad. He’s already been doing a lot of traveling for his current campaign. Yes, Biden’s gait is slowing, but he has extraordinary stamina. He works long hours in a high-stress job and remains sharp when talking to members of Congress, his Cabinet, and the media about complicated issues. He reads his briefing papers carefully and often asks his staff to provide further information.
Trump, on the other hand, may be a few years younger, but he is truly an old man. He’s significantly overweight. He’s a fanatic for unhealthy fast food. While speaking, he often gasps for breath. He doesn’t do aerobic exercise, and even when he’s playing golf, he doesn’t walk the course; he rides on a cart. And reading? Forget it. Even as president, he boasted that he didn’t read his staff’s daily intelligence briefs. This is, in part, because he has a short attention span. “I like bullets, or I like as little as possible,” he said.
Yes, the public occasionally receives an update that certifies Trump’s “superb” physical condition, but like much of the information that comes from his orbit, it’s hard to trust those reports.
The former President’s mendacity began early. In 1968, a New York City podiatrist claimed that Trump had bone spurs in his heels, providing him with the excuse he needed to get a medical exemption from military service during the Vietnam war. Dr. Larry Braunstein, the foot doctor who diagnosed the “bone spurs,” rented his office from Fred C. Trump, the former president’s father. Braunstein died in 2007, but when the New York Times looked into the matter, his daughters said that their father often recounted how he helped Trump avoid the draft as a favor to Fred. “I know it was a favor,” one daughter, Dr. Elysa Braunstein, told the Times.
Later, during the 2016 campaign, Trump rolled out obviously false assertions about his physical fitness, even as Republican conspiracists disseminated disinformation that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had a degenerative disease. Trump’s personal physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, wrote one report filled with hyperbole. “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” Bornstein wrote in December 2015. Trump’s “physical strength and stamina are extraordinary,” he claimed, and his bloodwork was “astonishingly excellent.”
Three years later, Bornstein confessed that Trump had dictated the letter himself. “I didn’t write that letter,” Bornstein told CNN. He also said that Trump’s bodyguard had conducted a “raid” on his medical office in February 2017, taking all of Trump’s lab reports and medical charts.
Similarly, in 2018, the White House physician, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, declared Trump to be in “excellent” overall health and in possession of “incredibly good genes” during a White House press briefing (although Trump talks about his genes constantly, medical doctors rarely do.) Jackson also announced that Trump was 6 foot, 3 inches and weighed 239 pounds, conveniently putting the President’s body mass index at 29.9—just below the 30.0 threshold be officially described as obese, rather than merely overweight. But photos of Trump with others have raised questions about whether he is actually 6’3” (he’s actually 6’2”) or that he weighed only 239 at the time (estimates ranged as high as 267.)
Actual good health in one’s seventies requires effort, of course. Yet, Jackson acknowledged that Trump didn’t have a daily physical fitness routine. He said he would encourage Trump to exercise and eat better. There’s no evidence that Trump ever took that seriously. In fact, he is apparently opposed to exercise on principle. In 2016, the Washington Post revealed that Trump gave up athletics after college because he “believed the human body was like a battery, with a finite amount of energy, which exercise only depleted.” Experts, of course, understand that the human body actually becomes stronger with exercise.
But lying about Trump’s physical health has its rewards, whether it is a sweetheart office lease or a big career move. Two months after his 2018 physical exam, Trump nominated Jackson, who had no administrative experience, to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs. That nomination blew up after Senator Jon Tester (D-Mont.) released allegations that Jackson had overprescribed pills and drank on the job. So, in 2020, with Trump’s support, Jackson ran for and won a race for Congress from Texas’ 13th Congressional District.
Despite Jackson’s assurances, journalists have provided concrete evidence that it is Trump who may have serious health problems. In May 2017, at the G7 summit in Taormina, Sicily with world leaders, the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan walked 700 yards to take a group photo at a piazza in a hilltop town. Trump chose to wait until he could ride in a golf cart, keeping the others waiting. And during a 2020 commencement speech at West Point, which he delivered haltingly, Trump needed two hands to lift a water glass to his mouth, suggesting some kind of tremor. After the speech ended, Trump walked very slowly down a ramp, keeping his eyes on his feet. That night he explained that for the “final ten feet I ran down to level ground. Momentum!” But videos reveal that Trump did not run the “final ten feet” to the ground. He walked at a normal speed for the last three or four steps.
In contrast to the many hours Biden spends on the job, Trump has also never been known as a hard worker. While campaigning for president in 2016, he said “I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off.” Once in office, however, he took more vacations than any of his predecessors. He spent 307 days, almost a full year, golfing during his presidency, mostly at his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida, and his club in Bedminster, N.J.
Fun fact: this is the most golf played of any president in history.
And when it comes to mental health, is there any real controversy over which politician lacks the emotional stability to serve as president? While Biden is well known for privately upbraiding those who haven’t met his standards, he listens, is publicly affectionate, polite, and tirelessly greets the Americans he encounters. But numerous accounts of Trump reveal him to be thin-skinned, addicted to flattery, a megalomaniac, demagogic, impulsive, vindictive, a sociopath, and a narcissist who lacks empathy or a social conscience. During his presidency, two books—Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump, by Allen Frances, former psychiatry department chairman at Duke University School of Medicine, and The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, edited by Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist at Yale School of Medicine—heightened public debate about Trump’s psychological fitness to be president.
And what about the basic intelligence of these two men? Biden, like most people, rarely discusses his intelligence. But, on many occasions, Trump has claimed that he’s “really smart” and even a “ super-genius,” pointing to his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. “My I.Q. is one of the highest,” Trump tweeted in 2013. During a CNN-sponsored Republican town hall in Columbia, South Carolina in February 2016, he reminded the audience that “I was a good student and all of this stuff. I mean, I’m a smart person.” In 2018, Trump wrote, “Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.”
Yet, anyone who feels compelled to boast about how smart he is clearly suffers from profound insecurity about his intelligence and accomplishments. In Trump’s case, he has good reason to doubt himself. Although he grew up in a wealthy family, he was not a good student. After high school he attended Fordham University, at the time a respected but not very selective Catholic institution, and certainly not where the sons of the super-rich expected to wind up. After two lackluster years at Fordham, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school.
But according to Gwenda Blair’s 2001 biography, The Trumps, Trump’s grades at Fordham were not good enough to qualify for a transfer to Penn. Blair wrote that Trump got into the university as a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer who knew Trump’s older brother, Freddy. The college’s admissions staff also surely knew that Trump’s father was a wealthy real estate developer and a potential donor.
After graduating in 1968, Trump exaggerated his academic accomplishments at Penn, statements that no one fact-checked for decade: on at least two occasions in the 1970s, The New York Times reported that he “graduated first in his class.” Trump is the likely source for this assertion, and it isn’t true. He didn’t even make the Dean’s List, as the campus newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, reported it in 1968.
Many years ago, Biden also exaggerated his own academic credentials, but his long political life and several presidential runs meant that these statements were quickly debunked. The facts are admittedly unimpressive. Reporters discovered that at the University of Delaware, Biden graduated with a C average and was ranked 506th in a class of 688. At Syracuse University’s law school, he ranked 76th out of 85 in his graduating class. Perhaps because this is now public knowledge (Trump’s academic records have remained private) Biden has mocked Trump’s habit of boasting about his intelligence. “I’m clearly not as smart as Trump,” Biden said sarcastically in 2018, “the smartest man in the world.”
Of course, college grades and class rank aren’t the best test of someone’s potential to be an effective president. Good presidents have judgement, the ability to think strategically, to understand complex issues, and be adept at surrounding themselves with knowledgeable people. They hire, utilize, and keep good staff.
That’s Biden—not Trump. According to Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, [CP1] “100 percent” of Trump’s closest White House aides questioned his intelligence and fitness for office. According to Wolff, both Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus derided Trump as an “idiot;” chief economic advisor Gary Cohn said that Trump was “dumb as shit;” and national security advisor H.R. McMaster considered Trump a “dope.” This came on top of early reports that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron.”
It’s no wonder that the Trump White House was a revolving door.
Other observers have noted that Trump has a difficult time expressing himself and speaking in complete sentences. Tony Schwartz, who spent a great deal of time with Trump while ghostwriting his 1987 book The Art of the Deal, noted that Trump has a very limited vocabulary. A linguistic analysis by Politico found that Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level. A When researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University compared the Republican and Democratic 2016 presidential candidates in terms of their vocabulary and grammar, Trump scored at a fifth-grade level, the lowest of all the candidates.
More important than grades, IQ or vocabulary is the elusive quality of judgement. That involves learning from experience, sorting out what’s important and unimportant, hiring people who will question your ideas, making decisions when none of the decision are very good or when the available data is incomplete, and having a keen moral sense of right and wrong.
Let’s see a show of hands when it comes to Biden or Trump in this category.
Finally, let’s compare Trump’s record of achievement between the ages of 70 and 74 to Biden’s between the ages of 76 and 79. Biden has passed more major pieces of legislation in two and a half years than Trump did in four years in the White House.
Granted, our 2024 candidates are both old men. But only Trump is physically, emotionally, and mentally unfit to be president. As Biden likes to say, “Don’t compare me to the almighty. Compare me to the alternative.”
The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is theclear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The primeminister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.
Netanyahu will certainly try to evade his responsibility and cast the blame on the heads of the army, Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet security service who, like their predecessors on the eve of the Yom Kippur War, saw a low probability of war with their preparations for a Hamas attack proving flawed.
They scorned the enemy and its offensive military capabilities. Over the next days and weeks, when the depth of Israel Defense Forces and intelligence failures come to light, a justified demand to replace them and take stock will surely arise.However, the military and intelligence failure does not absolve Netanyahu of his overallresponsibility for the crisis, as he is the ultimate arbiter of Israeli foreign and security affairs. Netanyahu is no novice in this role, like Ehud Olmert was in the Second Lebanon War. Nor is he ignorant in military matters, as Golda Meir in 1973 and Menachem Begin in 1982 claimed to be.
Netanyahu also shaped the policy embraced by the short-lived “government of change” led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid: a multidimensional effort to crush the Palestinian national movement in both its wings, in Gaza and the West Bank, at a price that would seem acceptable to the Israeli public.
In the past, Netanyahu marketed himself as a cautious leader who eschewed wars and multiple casualties on Israel’s side. After his victory in the last election, he replaced this caution with the policy of a “fully-right government,” with overt steps taken toannex the West Bank, to carry out ethnic cleansing in parts of the Oslo-defined Area C, including the Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley.
This also included a massive expansion of settlements and bolstering of the Jewish presence on Temple Mount, near the Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as boasts of an impending peace deal with the Saudis in which the Palestinians would get nothing, with open talk of a “second Nakba” in his governing coalition. As expected, signs of an outbreak of hostilities began in the West Bank, where Palestinians started feeling the heavier hand of the Israeli occupier. Hamas exploited the opportunity in order to launch its surprise attack on Saturday.
Above all, the danger looming over Israel in recent years has been fully realized. A prime minister indicted in three corruption cases cannot look after state affairs, as national interests will necessarily be subordinate to extricating him from a possible conviction and jail time.
This was the reason for establishing this horrific coalition and the judicial coup advanced by Netanyahu, and for the enfeeblement of top army and intelligence officers, who were perceived as political opponents. The price was paid by the victims of the invasion in the Western Negev.
Netanyahu bears responsibility for this Israel-Gaza war
Now imagine what the US would be doing right now if Donald Trump had won the 2020 election. I’m pretty sure we would be at war with Iran right now.