Trump is an Idiot
Commentaries
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        created 12/31/2017

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        I have see so many cool commentaries on Trump and the republican party that they deserve to be recorded.

        -- Trump’s personality — lying, narcissism, bullying, bigotry, crassness, name calling, ignorance, paranoia, incompetence and pettiness.
                    "Character Doesn’t Count” has become a de facto G.O.P. motto. (Ross Douthat column, NYT 12/30/17)

        -- Trump Is Still Happily Mixing Government Affairs With His Private Businesses, and not a single Republican elected official seems to care.
                   (NY Mag headline 12/31/17)

        -- Let’s talk about two stories that might seem separate: the deadly neglect of Puerto Rico, and the ongoing sabotage of American health care.
                  What these stories have in common is that millions of Americans are going to suffer, and hundreds if not thousands die, because Trump
                   and his officials are too self-centered to do their jobs. (Trump’s Deadly Narcissism, Paul Krugman, NYT, 9/29/17)

        -- Donald Trump’s manic dark energy drives him to vaunt himself and denigrate his fellow human beings relentlessly: all day, all night, every day,
                     and every night. He appears to literally believe that he knows more about everything than everybody, despite his lack of experience, study,
                     intellectual curiosity, or even normal attention span. "I have a very good brain.” The narcissistic fantasy that any brain is so good it doesn’t
                     need a brain trust bigger than me, myself,  and I, is scary and crazy. (Solon, 8/4/17)

        -- Americans are shocked on a daily basis by President Trump’s infantile, narcissistic behavior: his hypersensitivity to criticism and impulsive, retaliatory
                     insults, such as against MSNBC journalists “Morning Joe” Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, his flagrant lying and grandiose hubris.
                    Without any political experience, his enormous self-confidence motivated him to compete in arguably the most difficult political arena in the
                     world and defeat seasoned politicians of both political parties. (Huffington Post, 7/1/17)

        -- “He’s a pathological liar. I’ve said that repeatedly and I’ve been saying it since the 80s. He has two sports, golf and lying, and that’s it. He just lies
                    about everything.” “I don’t think he’s changed much. What you’re seeing now is what you saw 30 years ago.”  “(His lying) was so over the top,
                    it was so arrogant. He’s a narcissist beyond description. (NY Post gossip columnist Susan Mulcahy, who has followed Trump since 80s,
                    theguardian.com, 12/1/17)

        -- What deserves rebuke is the obsequiousness of the current Republican political leadership toward Trump as well as the indifference of the president’s
                    protectors to the rule of law. Their willingness to pile falsehood upon falsehood in his defense amounts to a war on the basic requirements of
                    reasoned debate in a free society. (E.J. Dionne in WP 12/31/17)

        --  At his core, Trump is a man who expects the federal government to serve him personally. (Chait on NY mag page, 1/2/18)

        -- Trump's strategy for political survival is rooted in a willingness to destroy our institutions. (E.J. Dionne, WP 1/3/18)

        -- Trump’s stunning lack of knowledge and his indifference to his own obliviousness have led diplomats to label him “insane,” “catastrophic,”
                    terrifying,” “incompetent” and “dangerous.” (E.J. Dionne quoting Susan Glasser in Politico, WP 1/3/18)

        -- Language is closely tied with cognition, and the president’s speech patterns are increasingly repetitive, fragmented, devoid of content, and restricted
                    in vocabulary. Trump’s overuse of superlatives like tremendous, fantastic, and incredible are not merely elements of personal style. These filler
                    words reflect reduced verbal fluency. (brain doctor Ford Vox, dec 2017 requoted in NYMag article by EricLevitz 1/4/18)

        --  “You call places like Malaysia, Indonesia, and you say, you know, how many people do you have? And it’s pretty amazing how many people they
                    have.” The president made that remark in response to a question about the ideal corporate tax rate, demonstrating the degree to which his
                    thinking drifts. (transcript of Trump interview with WSJ in July 2017),  referenced in NYMag article by EricLevitz 1/4/18)

        -- “He is definitely impulsive. He is world-class narcissistic not just for our day but for the ages. You can’t say enough about how incompetent and
                    unqualified he is to be leader of the free world. But that does not make him mentally ill.”  (psychiatrist quoted in NYT 1/6/18)

        --  The real secret of the Trump administration is that it is the WYSIWYG presidency. There is no grand plan or veiled purpose. There is no wizard
                   behind the curtain — just an old, irate, obnoxiously ignorant man. (WP oped by  Paul Musgrave 1/7/18)

        -- "OK, people think they’re interchangeable, but they’re not."
             "I know. Don’t say it. I’m thinking it too."   Trump in an interview with WSJ (1/12/18). Just jibberish.

        -- Even for those of us who had braced for catastrophe, the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency was worse than expected — more divisive,
                    mean-spirited, erratic, unhinged, incompetent and egomaniacal than could have been imagined. (Ruth Marcus column in WP 1/19/18)

        -- Trump’s court evangelicals have become active participants in the moral deregulation of our political life. Never mind whatever is true,
                   whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is of good repute. (Michael Gerson in WP, 1/22/18)
                    (Conclusion: In looking the other way with Trump evangelicals have demostrated what crap they truly are.)

        -- Donald Trump will destroy this entire country — its institutions and its safeguards, the rule of law and the customs of civility, the concept of truth
                   and the inviolable nature of valor — to protect his own skin. We are not dealing with a normal person here... This is a damaged man, a man
                   who has always lived in his own reality and played by his own rules (because he was rich enough to do so). (NYT columnist Blow 2/4/18)

        -- The prospect of a recession or financial crisis on Mr. Trump’s watch is unnerving, because he is as confident in his own abilities as he is lacking
                    in knowledge and sound judgment. When confronted with criticism, he lashes out like an intemperate child. (NYT edutorial 2/6/18)

        --  We deserve better than a leader who uses language as sloppily and poisonously as Trump does, who reacts to every unwelcome message by
                    smearing the messenger, and whose litmus test for patriotism is this and this alone: Do you worship me? (NYT columnist Bruni 2/6/18)

        --  Democrats, he said, were “selfish,” putting their own feelings above the country’s welfare. The man who signed tax legislation that benefits his
                    business empire and spends roughly one of every three days at a Trump-branded property wouldn’t know anything about that.
                    (NYT columnist Bruni 2/6/18)
        -- (from NYT columnist, Charles Blow, all from a single column on 2/7/18)
                    -- He eschews intellectualism for intuition, because he prefers to watch rather than to read.
                    -- Nuance and complexity are founts of confusion in Trump’s basest mind. So he gravitates to the most emotionally charged parts of any
                                issue and amplifies them.
                   --  His branding and messaging playbook could actually fit on an index card: Exploit people’s covetousness, ambition, lust, greed, fear,
                                racial tribalism and gullibility. One of his most fundamental (means) is lying.
                   --  He is a pathological, irredeemable liar. This lying may feel inconsequential, but I say that the lying is everything — the root thing,
                                the foundational thing.
                  -- We have a manipulative liar with autocratic tendencies as the American president. He has an enormous ego. He prioritizes his personal
                              feelings and fortunes over the country’s health and stability.  (yes!)
                 -- My sense is that absolutely nothing will be beyond the pale for Trump. He will lie, exploit and destroy. If you think he’s dangerous now,
                                you haven’t seen anything yet.
        -- President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both. Trump is either hiding something so threatening to
                    himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. (Thomas Friedman, NYT columnist, 2/18/18)

        --  Either Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally
                    own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while he was in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest. My guess
                    is what Trump is hiding has to do with money. (Thomas Friedman, NYT columnist, 2/18/18)

        -- President Trump asserted Monday that he would have rushed in to save the students and teachers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
                   from a gunman with an assault weapon, even if he was unarmed at the time of the massacre. (NYT 2/26/18)   (Oh yea.  Now the school
                   shooting are all about him,  Instead of supporting gun restrictions we get another diversion.)

        -- Trump/Kim summit --- Trump is a man whose word, grounded in his total ignorance of foreign policy, is worthless. The Koreans are about
                  to find this out and learn what it is like to deal with jello. (Don Fulton, 3/10/18)