The Malignant Narcissist Tweets Again. America Weeps.

June 30, 2017, 8:20 AM:   What was just revealed on Morning Joe about Trump and his people intimidating and threatening both Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough is truly frightening. The president and his people blackmailed both MSNBC hosts and threatened to run an unflattering story about them through Trump's pal who owns The National Inquirer unless they personally groveled to Trump and apologized for their coverage of his presidency. (Thankfully, both MSNBC hosts ignored Trump.)

This is unacceptable. I believe Brzezenski and Scarborough, because Donald Trump is not just a liar and obsessive crank who stooped to a form of black mail in order to get people to kiss his ass, but a man who has no personal morals or boundaries and is a dangerously thin-skinned, vengeful coward. 

Read about what I just heard. It is more than disturbing to hear this about a POTUS. We have a sick, sick vengeful crank in the White House.



John Cassidy, The New Yorker:

Where America, until recently, had at its helm a Commander-in-Chief whom other countries acknowledged as a global leader and a figure of stature even if they didn't like his policies, it now has something very different: an oafish Troll-in-Chief who sullies his office daily.

Ugly is as ugly does

Instead of talking about the GOP's miserable non-health care bill, today all the news is about the vile and classless man in the White House and his bitchy, mean girlie tweets about MSNBC hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough.

Unless you're living under a rock, you all know what the man-child tweeted, and you've all heard the condemnations from both liberals and conservatives.

For me, it was just another piece of evidence that shows Donald Trump to be a low-class piece of trash who happens to  be rich. Wealth does not necessarily bring good breeding and dignity with it, and that's a fact where Donald Trump is concerned. I've seen people with more dignity in a trailer park than I've seen exhibited by the man who constantly brags about what a quality person he is.

Trump is a sad little man with a very serious personality disorder, and I wonder about the mental health of the people who still support him.

It's hard to believe, but here's what the occupant of the Oval Office spends his time tweeting:

A malignant narcissist and all around jerk.

And 30% of the voting public still thinks he's swell.


Not all conservatives find Trump charming. Many principled conservatives see him for the bag of fetid offal that he is:

William Kristol of The Weekly Standard (via Digby):

The right wingers bellyache all the time about the fact that Trump gets no respect. Today's episode of disgusting and inappropriate tweets by a POTUS is a rank illustration of why Trump is mocked so mercilessly by 60% of the American people and the rest of the world --except Russia!

ONLY 12% OF AMERICANS SUPPORT THE SENATE HEALTH CARE PLAN

USA TODAY Poll: 

Only 12% of Americans support the Senate health care plan.





Remember when GOPers screamed that Obamacare was shoved down their throats?  

Who's doing the shoving down people's throats now?

Twelve percent support Trumpcare? 

A YUUUUUUGE majority of Americans don't want the stinky cheese being offered by the GOP as "health care." It's a miserable plan that hurts millions and millions of men, women, and children, the elderly, the sick, the handicapped, infants, and fetuses.  Have I left anyone out? I'm sure if I have, the GOP will find some vulnerable population to throw off their insurance or to gouge them so that they cannot afford it.

And then they'll enrich the richy riches who'll laugh all the way to the bank as they screw over their fellow Americans. 

What is wrong with the Congressional GOP? Are they so full of hatred for the former Democratic President Obama that they actually will harm their fellow citizens just for spite?


The current GOP bill does NOTHING to fulfill Trump's pledge when as a candidate he promised no cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and that he would cover EVERYONE and the coverage would be less costly than Obamacare.

Every one of those promises was a con by the biggest CON in the countlry. He's treating this country the way he's treated other people he's done business with:

He gives them big promises of something beautiful, and delivers STINKY CHEESE.

Then he'll blame President Obama for another Trump failure.

FAKE TRUMP

Trump loves to call the media FAKE! He's spent his time as a politician attacking the media and calling cable news stations FAKE!

Here's the delicious irony.

Trump has this TIME cover framed and hanging in his golf clubs all over this country and in Scotland.

Guess what.

IT'S A FAKE!

Time Magazine never featured Trump on this cover:

Check out what a REAL Time Magazine cover looks like on the left and what Trump's FAKE Time Magazine cover he's plastered all over his properties looks like.

A jerk who spends his presidency calling the media FAKE! made a FAKE! Time Magazine cover to promote his ego. 

The man is psychologically sick. And a very large FRAUD.

The GOP's Trumpcare will hurt the states that voted for Trump the most!

NOTE: New Mexico voted for Clinton. But New Mexico's governor and lt. governor are Republicans.

NM has highest rate of Medicaid-covered births

By Rick Nathanson / Journal Staff Writer

Tuesday, March 28th, 2017 at 12:05am

Copyright © 2017 Albuquerque Journal

New Mexico leads the nation in the percentage of babies born into Medicaid families – which can be taken as a reflection of the state’s high poverty rate or an indication that government here takes care of its own.

According to figures from 2015, 72 percent of the births reported in New Mexico were paid for by Medicaid, a jointly funded federal-state health insurance program for low-income, disabled and other people who qualify.

New Mexico’s top ranking was from a just-released survey of all 50 states and the District of Columbia conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Arkansas ranked second, with 67 percent, and Louisiana was third, with 65 percent. The state with the smallest percentage of babies born on Medicaid was New Hampshire, with 27 percent.

On average, Medicaid paid for about 47 percent of all births nationwide, the Kaiser survey concluded.

Because roughly 900,000 of New Mexico’s 2 million population are on Medicaid, “it’s not surprising that it carries over to a large proportion of Medicaid births,” said Brian Sanderoff, president of Research & Polling Inc. “First and most obvious is that New Mexico has among the highest poverty rates in the nation.”

In fact, according to the most recent Kids Count Data Book, New Mexico is worst in the nation in the percentage of children living in poverty; has among the highest percentage of kids living in families where parents lack full-time, year-round employment; and has among the highest child and teen death rates in the nation from accidents and addictions.

That New Mexico has such a high rate of Medicaid births can be seen as a positive and proactive health care measure, said James Jimenez, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children, which produces the Kids Count Data Book.

“What this indicates, first and foremost, is that New Mexico has shown smart leadership in terms of ensuring healthy births,” he said. “It’s smart because, when prenatal care and healthy births are supported, it saves money in the long run, so it’s the fiscally responsible thing to do.”

On the downside, Jimenez noted, this first-in-the-nation ranking shows that “New Mexico’s economy is not providing enough good-paying jobs that include benefits like health insurance. We’ve been pursuing a failed, trickle-down, tax-cuts-for-jobs economic development plan, yet we have the highest unemployment rate in the nation.”

State Human Services Secretary Brent Earnest said, “Ensuring newborn children in New Mexico get off to a healthy start is a primary goal of New Mexico’s Medicaid program, which is why we provide health care coverage to pregnant women who don’t have other health insurance.”

Cancer and the "Mean" Republican Health Care Bill

Those of us who've faced and fought cancer can take courage and hope from reading Boston's Mayor Marty Walsh's story below on how he won the battle against his childhood cancer.

But not all Americans have the medical insurance to help them through this very difficult and expensive ordeal. The current bill in the Senate is a national disgrace that threatens to take away Medicaid from our most vulnerable American citizens and re-introduces lifetime caps on insurance coverage; and at the same time, enriches already very wealthy Americans by giving them huge tax cuts.

Are we our brothers' and sisters' keepers? Does the Republican Party believe in helping those who cannot help themselves? Does the Republican Party believe in anything except tax cuts for the wealthy? Does the Republican Party have any humanity left in it?

One of our blogging buddies, Jersey McJones, is fighting cancer. Think of him and the thousands of other Americans who face this struggle every day and who need affordable medical insurance to help them fight this battle. 


I know what that struggle is about. I've fought against cancer four times. Thanks to the exceptional medical teams at Massachusetts General Hospital, I can count myself as a cancer survivor, just like Boston's Mayor Marty Walsh.  I fervently hope Jersey has the same outcome I've had, and I wish him courage and strength to face this ordeal. All of us in the blogging community hope for the best outcome for him.

Keep calling your senators and representatives to let them know this inhuman legislation is not acceptable to Americans who care and who believe we are our brothers' and sisters' keepers.

Here's Mayor Marty Walsh's story:

A Kid Like Me

When I was a kid, I fell asleep in school a lot. The teachers didn’t scold me, and they kept the other kids from pointing and laughing. Because I wasn’t just tired — I was exhausted. I was drained. I was going through chemo.

When I was seven, I was diagnosed with Burkitt’s lymphoma, an aggressive cancer. The doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital gave me two months to live. I spent four years in and out of aggressive treatments, missing second and third grade, fighting for my life when I should’ve been playing hockey. But slowly, I recovered.

My community stood by my family, and my dad’s union insurance made it possible for us to afford costly treatment. By the time I was a teenager, some of my friends didn’t even know I had been sick.

Cancer is hard enough on a family. Imagine having to choose between saving your child and staying in your house? Or saving your child and selling the car you use to get to work? 

The healthcare bill that’s racing through the Senate right now is designed to do just that — make cash-strapped families pay for situations beyond their control, and put the savings toward tax cuts for the ultra-rich.

I can’t imagine what would’ve happened if my family didn’t have insurance. My treatment would’ve bankrupted us.

Evan Seigfried (conservative Republican):

 Senate’s BCRA does not help Americans or health care system The Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), the Senate’s health care bill, is a draconian proposal. Following in the footsteps of the House’s AHCA, the bill does nothing to lower the cost of health coverage, while also failing to improve the quality of care. 

On top of this, the BCRA is a bill that leaves the health care system worse off and ignores the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. One would think that after the AHCA debacle, Senate Republicans would have proposed a vastly different bill, but they did not. The BCRA disproportionately impacts Americans on the lower end of the economic spectrum. 

Take how the bill proposes aiding low income individuals and families by giving them federal tax credits to help them purchase insurance. In no way would that be of assistance to those Americans, as they do not earn enough to pay federal income tax in the first place. Without paying federal income tax, they cannot receive the tax credits. This portion of the bill sounds good, but does not actually have a meaningful impact.

Sunday Science Blog

THE INVASION OF THE PYROSOMES!

Millions of glowing tropical sea creatures have started to appear in the Pacific Northwest 


 Millions of strange-looking glowing sea creatures called pyrosomes have started to "bloom" off the coast of the Pacific Northwest of the US and Canada, filling up fishing nets, clogging hooks and research gear, and befuddling scientists who have no idea why populations of the tube-like organisms are exploding, flooding the water column. 

 "Call it the invasion of the pyrosomes," writes Michael Milstein in a post on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Northwest Fisheries Science Center website. They started to show up in the spring and in the past month or two, swarms of the animals been spotted all over the region. Pyrosomes are odd creatures — they're technically tunicates, colonies of individual organisms known as zooids that feed off of plankton and other small organisms. 

They have little bumps, are about as firm as a cucumber or pickle, and are gelatinous like jellyfish. They're translucent and bioluminescent, which gives them a glow (the word pyrosome means "fire body"). And while they can occasionally be found further north, they typically inhabit tropical waters, which makes the appearance of these massive quantities strange and disturbing to fishermen who worry that they could devastate a fragile food network.

Saturday Night Funnies and Flashback

WHY WE MUST MAKE A MOCKERY OF TRUMP
by Howard Jacobson

O.K.   See below:




Remember when the rabid right called Hillary "fat?" 

Remember how they made fun of her physical appearance?

Yeah.

Me too.

DONALD TRUMP PLAYS TENNIS IN HIS TIGHTIE WHITIES

Republican Lawmakers Are Immoral, Terrible Human Beings

This isn't just a matter of health care policy, it is a moral matter. The greatest, richest country in the world is ready to bring suffering and death to its most vulnerable citizens, while at the same time enriching the wealthiest.

This is the immoral Republican plan for health care, led by the most immoral POTUS in U.S. history.

To many Republicans, really sick people, especially those who suffer the most, are a total inconvenience. The sickness of other American citizens is not their responsibility, unless of course, that same terminal illness affects them personally, then it suddenly matters. Funny how that is isn't it?




 "While several Republican senators have registered disapproval that the current GOP Obamacare repeal plan would harm constituents who rely on the Medicaid expansion, there are others who would like to harm even more of their constituents, like the House Freedom Caucus member who thinks cancer patients should just go to the emergency room."  --Marian Fisher





Republican lawmaker says cancer patients can go to the ER for health care




 When Erin Burnett on CNN asked DeSantis was asked how he and his colleagues would address the story of Tiffany Koehler, a Donald Trump voter and cancer survivor who says she is only alive today because of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, he suggested that anyone without health insurance could still just go to the emergency room.

[skip]

This emergency room lie became a central focus of the 2012 presidential campaign when Joe Soptic told the story of his wife, who ignored the symptoms of the cancer that killed her because she could not afford to see a doctor. By the time she got to an emergency room, it was too late. Romney’s own campaign exposed that lie when they said that Soptic’s wife would have survived if she had only had access to the Obamacare-identical Romneycare. 

Every day, it becomes more and more obvious that Republicans are not even trying to prevent people who rely on Obamacare from losing their insurance under their repeal plan, and DeSantis’ attitude underpins that lack of care for those people. Republicans have also again begun to use the racist language of the “welfare queen” smear, notably by Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s (R-UT) suggestion that poor people forego a “new iPhone” in favor of health insurance, and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) flat-out calling the GOP plan “welfare.” 

DeSantis did his part, as well, in resurrecting Reagan-era coding by telling Burnett that Medicaid ought not be available at all to those he considers “able-bodied”




What a putz! I haven't seen very many "able-bodied" Alzheimer patients in nursing homes where many of the residents depend on Medicaid for their health care costs. 

What is wrong with Republicans? Do you have to check your morality at the door in order to become a member of the GOP? It appears that is true. In order to be a card-carrying Gooper, all one needs to do is ignore facts and reality and pretend to be a compassionate Christian -- but only on Sundays, when everyone can see your hypocritical paeans to your merciful God.

We know Trump is an incessant liar; now we know he's a weaselly bluffer too.

h/t to Rational Nation USA for his comment that alerted me to the recent news that Trump admitted there are no tapes of his conversations with Comey, as Trump hinted and as he kept suggesting they existed by playing his little cat and mouse game of promising to let the American people know "sometime soon."

Weasel words from a typically weak bully who tried to intimidate someone he couldn't get to. In this case, James Comey, although Comey welcomed the news that there may have been tapes. Comey had nothing to fear from tapes, since he wasn't lying in his recent testimony, and the entire world knows that egregious lying is second nature to Trump.

Trump's suggestion that there may be tapes was how a coward tries to win points in a pissing contest. Well, Trump lost, and he's a pissah (but NOT a wicked one -- that would be a compliment coming from a Bostonian.)

Comey's more honest, more forthright and more of a man than the Lying Bluffer, Trump could ever hope to be.




Daily Kos:

Trump admits there were never any tapes of his meetings with fired FBI director James Comey


"That’s correct. Donald Trump never had any kind of recordings of his meetings with Comey. And since the meetings were one on one with the former FBI director, that means Trump knew from the outset that there were no recordings. 

It’s not a mystery now. It wasn’t a mystery then. 

All the smug threats, all the “you’ll find out” promises, all the strum and drang and dang strumming all leads to … nothing. Because there was nothing. Nothing of course, except further proof that Trump is a loudmouth bully who plays a game of bluff and threat with absolutely nothing to back up his bullshit statements. Which is really good evidence that Trump is likely to be exaggerating, overplaying, and utterly lying about everything else. 

Robert Mueller, please take note. And no recordings also means that, when it comes to Trump’s word against Comey, Trump has nothing to back him up except for many, many, many examples of his lying."

IT'S MUELLER TIME!

TRUMP'S IOWA B.S. RALLY

The Bull$h!++er-in-Chief

President Trump attacked wind power during a rally in Iowa — a state that gets nearly a third of its energy from wind, a higher percentage than any other state in the country



Trump blasted wind power during a rally in Iowa Wednesday night, despite the state getting nearly a third of its power from the alternative energy source. During his speech in Cedar Rapids Wednesday night, Trump said he was bringing back coal, highlighting a coal mine that opened in Pennsylvania last month.


“I don’t want to just hope the wind blows to light up your homes,” he said. 


NOTE:  Lord Dampnut apparently knows nothing about batteries and the storage of energy produced by wind. His ignorance is quite appealing to the mobs that attend his rallies. --S.K.

 Iowa gets almost a third of its energy from wind, the highest percentage of any state.

Trump Says He Has ‘Unified’ America And Takes Credit For The Obama Economy At Fact-Free Rally

This president can continue to hold campaign rallies and convince himself that those who show up actually represent the vast majority of the country, but they don't.






Donald Trump shames poor Americans at Iowa rally

Defending his hiring of billionaires, Donald Trump held a re-election rally in Iowa, and made controversial comments about low-income Americans in the process.

NBC News 

✔@NBCNews

President Trump on wealthy cabinet picks: "In those particular positions, I just don't want a poor person"

8:47 PM - 21 Jun 2017

During the Iowa Rally on Wednesday, Trump suggested creating law enacted in 1996


Known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), the legislation was passed during the administration of former President Bill Clinton and said that an immigrant is “not eligible for any Federal means-tested public benefit” for 5 years, which starts on the date the immigrant enters the country.




Lord Dampnut's Iowa rally was a success if success means spreading more Trumpian bull$h!+ and having mobs of supporters eat it up. 

B.S.er-in-Chief

More on the Georgia Special Election

From David Leonhardt:



The NY Times' David Leonhardt wrote the following in this morning email. I think it's worth a read. These two states/districts are so conservative they make David Duke look like a liberal. Trump's machine also pumped a few dollars into the races for the GOP candidates. And they bitch about Soros's meager contributions to Democrats.

"Democrats just can’t seem to win an election in the Trump era. With last night’s losses in Georgia and South Carolina, Democratic House candidates are zero-for-four in special elections against Republicans this year.

It’s easy to look at this pattern and think that Democrats are doing something fundamentally wrong — that they can’t close the deal with voters and are destined to keep coming up short in next year’s midterms.

But if that’s the easy conclusion, it’s also the wrong one.

Politically, Democrats are doing fine for a party out of power. It obviously would have been better to have won one of last night’s races, especially given the hopes in Georgia. But the party still has a real chance to retake the House next year. A disappointing loss doesn’t change that fact.

I hesitate to use sports analogies, because a lot of readers are not sports fans. I hope you’ll permit one in this case, though, because it’s the most clarifying comparison I’m aware of.

For years, sports fans and athletes believed that some teams “knew how to win” — and found out a way to pull out close games — while others tended to choke. It certainly seemed to make sense to anyone who watched or played sports. You can see how the analogy applies to recent politics, right?

In sports, it turns out that the conventional wisdom about knowing how to win was mostly wrong. Teams that won a lot of very close games didn’t possess some special sauce for victory.

Instead, they were benefiting from a combination of circumstance and good fortune. Winning a bunch of close games had little predictive value. In fact, teams with a pattern of winning close games were also good candidates to start losing more than their win-loss record would have suggested.

Recent editions of baseball’s Baltimore Orioles, football’s Miami Dolphins and basketball’s Oklahoma City Thunder are all good examples. They looked clutch in the regular season, and then wilted in the playoffs.

Back to politics: The Republicans have won several tight races this year in districts that are favorable to them. The whole reason these special elections were happening is that Trump had appointed sitting House members to his cabinet. Winning close races in these districts is not a sign that Republicans will keep winning close races in less favorable places.

“Worth remembering,” Philip Bump of The Washington Post tweeted last night, “that the two seats tonight that are both running close were won by GOP candidates 7 months ago by 23.4 and 20.5 points.”
To be clear, the Democratic Party has an enormous amount of work to do. It doesn’t hold the White House, the Senate or the House, and it holds only about one in three governorships and state legislatures. Yet a handful of close losses in conservative districts shouldn’t make Democrats panic, no matter what this morning’s punditry says. . . ."

The Georgia Special Election

As I wrote over at RN USA's blog, it's not surprising that a red Republican won in a red, red district. What is surprising is that the Democrat, Jon Ossoff, came within 3.8 percentage points of beating the red Republican in what was once Newt Gingrich's and Tom Price's district. 

3.8 POINTS!

Sure, a win is a win, no matter how close, but of the 4 contests in red, red Republican districts, check out how the Democrats are gaining.  

We need to look at the long game and also understand that as long as Trump is president, these once solid, unassailable red, red Republican districts will continue to lose ground.

Again, look at the long game and look at how the red Republican support continues to fall away.

Here are some charts from Jobsanger to illustrate:

Dems Should Be Buoyed By Georgia / S. Carolina Results

Too Hot For Planes To Fly?

NOTICE:

People who don't believe climate change/global warming is real, skip this and go visit a blog that claims Trump is a competent and gracious man and that he is very much beloved by the American people as well as admired by people all over the world.

Phoenix flights cancelled because it's too hot for planes 

 As temperatures climb in Phoenix, Arizona, more than 40 flights have been cancelled - because it is too hot for the planes to fly. The weather forecast for the US city suggests temperatures could reach 120F (49C) on Tuesday. That is higher than the operating temperature of some planes. 

American Airlines announced it was cancelling dozens of flights scheduled to take off from Sky Harbor airport during the hottest part of the day. The local Fox News affiliate in Phoenix said the cancellations mostly affected regional flights on the smaller Bombardier CRJ airliners, which have a maximum operating temperature of about 118F (48C). 

The all-time record for temperatures in Phoenix is just slightly higher, at 122F, which hit on 26 June 1990. The cancelled flights were scheduled to take off between 15:00 and 18:00 local time. 

Why can't planes fly? 

At higher temperatures, air has a lower density - it is thinner. That lower air density reduces how much lift is generated on an aircraft's wings - a core principle in aeronautics. That, in turn, means the aircraft's engines need to generate more thrust to get airborne.

The NEOTUS*, Trump, on climate change/global warming:

*NEOTUS = National Embarrassment of the U.S.
"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."

 "NBC News just called it the great freeze - coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX?"


"Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!" "Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee - I'm in Los Angeles and it's freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!"

"Obama's talking about all of this with the global warming and...a lot of it's a hoax. It's a hoax. I mean, it's a money-making industry, OK? It's a hoax, a lot of it."

IRONY

We CANNOT have a president who is under criminal investigation!!!!!!

Sunday Night Poetry

Those Winter Sundays
BY ROBERT HAYDEN

 Sundays too my father got up early 
 and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, 
 then with cracked hands that ached 
 from labor in the weekday weather made 
 banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. 

 I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. 
 When the rooms were warm, he’d call, 
 and slowly I would rise and dress, 
 fearing the chronic angers of that house, 

 Speaking indifferently to him, 
 who had driven out the cold 
 and polished my good shoes as well. 
 What did I know, what did I know 
 of love’s austere and lonely offices?

The USS Fitzgerald Tragedy

We're a Navy family.

I have a grandson who is currently at sea serving on the destoyer, James E. Williams. When news of this tragedy broke, our family panicked while waiting to hear where it happened and to what vessel. Our family was relieved but took no comfort when we learned that the destroyer that was hit was the USS Fitzgerald, and not the one our grandson is serving on. Seven sailors are gone and we can only imagine the pain and suffering their families are going through. Our grandson is safe, but we mourn for the families and for the seven sailors who are lost forever.

We are heartbroken.






“I can imagine no more rewarding a career. And any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile, I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction: 'I served in the United States Navy.” ― John F. Kennedy

Trump: Too Stupid To Be President

The 30 percenters who still support Trump become highly insulted when people call them "stupid." But what other explanation is there for that group other than stupidity? Willfully blind? What keeps them defending the indefensible crackpot that is the POTUS? 

Read this piece from Foreign Policy by Max Boot to understand why almost a two-thirds majority of Americans has abandoned the fraudulent con man and so many who voted for Trump have now come to their senses and see Trump for the liar and cheap carnival barker that he is.

Those who still support Trump may never come to their senses, because they spend their time blaming other people (Mr. Obama, Hillary Clinton, Liberals, RINOs, and the Deep State) for Trump's own blunders, lies, and ridiculous tweets and refuse to look at the "ill-bragging gnome"1. that he is. He is internationally disliked by our allies and almost two-thirds of Americans do not approve of his corrupt lies and deceptions.

The remaining 30 percenters will probably stick with the "smoldering paranoid who haunts the White House, plagues the world, and offends every conscience of decency."2.

1. 2., PM Carpenter


There's only one conclusion to explain the 30 percenters who still support Trump: That they are determined to ignore his unceasingly ignominious tweeting, his lies, and his national and international policy blunders prove that they really are as mentally deficient as he is. 

If that offends them, too bad, I won't offer an apology. Their continued support for this National Disaster is putting Americans and what America has always stood for in danger. That they don't see this reality is more proof of Trump supporters' willful ignorance and blind allegience to a certifiable crackpot.

Donald Trump Is Proving Too Stupid to Be President

“You know, I’m, like, a smart person.” Uh huh.

By Max Boot

The surest indication of how not smart Trump is that he thinks his inability or lack of interest in acquiring knowledge doesn’t matter. He said last year that he reaches the right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.”

How’s that working out? There’s a reason why surveys show more support for Trump’s impeachment than for his presidency. From his catastrophically ill-conceived executive order on immigration to his catastrophically ill-conceived firing of Comey, his administration has been one disaster after another. And those fiascos can be ascribed directly to the president’s lack of intellectual horsepower.

How could Trump fire Comey knowing that the FBI director could then testify about the improper requests Trump had made to exonerate himself and drop the investigation of Flynn? And in case there was any doubt about Trump’s intent, he dispelled it by acknowledging on TV that he had the “Russia thing” in mind when firing the FBI director. That’s tantamount to admitting obstruction of justice. Is this how a smart person behaves? If Trump decides to fire the widely respected special counsel Robert Mueller, he will only be compounding this stupidity.

Or what about Trump’s response to the June 3 terrorist attack in London? He reacted by tweeting his support for the “original Travel Ban,” rather than the “watered down, politically correct version” under review by the Supreme Court. Legal observers — including Kellyanne Conway’s husband — instantly saw that Trump was undermining his own case, because the travel ban had been revised precisely in order to pass judicial scrutiny. Indeed, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in refusing to reinstate the travel ban on June 12, cited Trump’s tweets against him. Is this how a smart person behaves?

You could argue that Trump’s lack of acumen is actually his saving grace, because he would be much more dangerous if he were cleverer in implementing his radical agenda. But you can also make the case that his vacuity is imperiling American security.

Trump shared “code-word information” with Russia’s foreign minister, apparently without realizing what he was doing. In the process, he may have blown America’s best source of intelligence on Islamic State plots — a top-secret Israeli penetration of the militant group’s computers.

Trump picked a fight on Twitter with Qatar, apparently not knowing that this small, oil-rich emirate is host to a major U.S. air base that is of vital importance in the air war against the Islamic State.

Trump criticized London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, based on a blatant misreading of what Khan said in the aftermath of the June 3 attack: The mayor had said there was “no reason to be alarmed” about a heightened police presence on the streets — not, as Trump claimed, about the threat of terrorism. In the process, Trump has alienated British public opinion and may have helped the anti-American Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, win votes in Britain’s general election.

Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accord apparently because he thinks that global warming — a scientifically proven fact — is a hoax. His speech announcing the pullout demonstrated that he has no understanding of what the Paris accord actually is — a nonbinding compact that does not impose any costs on the United States.

Trump failed to affirm Article V, a bedrock of NATO, during his visit to Brussels, apparently because he labors under the misapprehension that European allies owe the United States and NATO “vast sums of money.” In fact, NATO members are now increasing their defense spending, but the money will not go to the United States or to the alliance; it will go to their own armed forces. Trump has since said he supports Article V, but his initial hesitation undermines American credibility and may embolden Russia.

Trump supporters used to claim that sage advisors could make up for his shortcomings. But he is proving too willful and erratic to be steered by those around him who know better. As Maggie Haberman of the New York Timesnotes: “Trump doesn’t want to be controlled. In [the] campaign, [he] would often do [the] opposite of what he was advised to do, simply because it was opposite.”

The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that if the vice president and a majority of the cabinet certify that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” he can be removed with the concurrence of two-thirds of both houses. That won’t happen, because Republicans are too craven to stand up to Trump. But on the merits perhaps it should. After nearly five months in office, Trump has given no indication that he possesses the mental capacity to be president.