Fun thing to do here is count the euphemisms for senility https://t.co/hI3ASYZxba
— Tim Octoberman (@timmarchman) October 11, 2017
Steve Bannon has told people he thinks Trump has only a 30% chance of serving full term. My latest: https://t.co/3EqYR8yWZl
— Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) October 11, 2017
Journalist credited for bringing down Roger Ailes gets assigned to Vanity Fair‘s Trump-watch:
At first it sounded like hyperbole, the escalation of a Twitter war. But now it’s clear that Bob Corker’s remarkable New York Times interview—in which the Republican senator described the White House as “adult day care” and warned Trump could start World War III—was an inflection point in the Trump presidency. It brought into the open what several people close to the president have recently told me in private: that Trump is “unstable,” “losing a step,” and “unraveling.”
The conversation among some of the president’s longtime confidantes, along with the character of some of the leaks emerging from the White House has shifted. There’s a new level of concern. NBC News published a report that Trump shocked his national security team when he called for a nearly tenfold increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal during a briefing this summer. One Trump adviser confirmed to me it was after this meeting disbanded that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron.”…
According to two sources familiar with the conversation, Trump vented to his longtime security chief, Keith Schiller, “I hate everyone in the White House! There are a few exceptions, but I hate them!” (A White House official denies this.) Two senior Republican officials said Chief of Staff John Kelly is miserable in his job and is remaining out of a sense of duty to keep Trump from making some sort of disastrous decision…
The White House denies these accounts. “The President’s mood is good and his outlook on the agenda is very positive,” an official said.
West Wing aides have also worried about Trump’s public appearances, one Trump adviser told me. The adviser said aides were relieved when Trump canceled his appearance on the season premiere of 60 Minutes last month. “He’s lost a step. They don’t want him doing adversarial TV interviews,” the adviser explained. Instead, Trump has sat down for friendly conversations with Sean Hannity and Mike Huckabee, whose daughter is Trump’s press secretary. (The White House official says the 60 Minutes interview is being rescheduled.)…
Recycling the GOP’s Reagan defence during the Iran-contra hearings: How can you cruel lie-brals abuse a sick old man like this? And by the time Oliver North was smarming it up for the cameras, the President was demonstrably, clinically past understanding what had been done in his name / under his auspices.
But right up to the end, Ronnie was a sunny, optimistic personality — and a trained actor. Trump is a nasty egomaniac who’s never taken direction well.
one thing trump doesn’t understand is that this was never about him, all his base wants is someone to piss libs off https://t.co/PnYNVJix7w pic.twitter.com/Lv5zNi1AZK
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) October 11, 2017
Chaser:
Oh my.https://t.co/E07Re7Ewto pic.twitter.com/QwF0xgvAuZ
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) October 11, 2017
The pharmacist quoted now says he didn’t mean ‘Alzheimer’s drugs’ literally — it was just a hypothetical. “STAT: Reporting from the frontiers of health and medicine”… and maybe, accidentally, politics?
Cheryl Rofer
Someone pointed out on Twitter that Corker talked about the White House as an adult daycare facility. People are accustomed to the Trump as toddler metaphor. But the adult daycare facility is where you send Grandpa who isn’t quite right in the head to get a few hours away.
dmsilev
Unpossible. Trump’s personal physician assured us last year that Trump was the healthiest individual ever to run for President.
Anonymous At Work
I thought that the Three Junior Stooges (Trump’s kids that he shows in public) should have switched the IQ test with a competency hearing.
Trentrunner
We don’t need to medicalize Trump’s horrible character.
He’s always been a thin-skinned bigoted self-centered rapey asshole.
THAT’s the problem.
Corner Stone
The difference being that Reagan had a genial, kindly old uncle with a friendly smile to lean back on.
Trump scares the shit out of everyone but about 30% of people who respond to polls.
Major Major Major Major
Damn, that’s a brutal article.
I took a picture of the smoke from the NorCal fires from stanford today, and put it next to a comparison shot I took from the same place earlier this year, here: https://imgur.com/gallery/RcIWF
raven
Lil Bit and the Bohdi chillin.
Schlemazel
@dmsilev:
Who do you think was supplying his drugs BEFORE he was getting them from the government?
Dayum, I KNEW I should have run for Congress, all that access to all those sweet free drugs. It certainly explains a lot of what goes on there
Anne Laurie
@Cheryl Rofer:
And it’s hard, nasty, underpaid work gets done at those facilities — the old people can be just as messy as toddlers, but they’re a lot less cute and a lot harder to handle physically. That’s why “someone” might not “show up for their shift”… and then who’s gonna keep the Manbaby-in-Chief from running into the roadway with his diapers over his head?
Corner Stone
Waiting for someone to read excerpts of the VF article to Trump. Who’s going to tell him what Bannon said?
Roger Moore
Can we please get somebody to do something about this instead of bemoaning it, mostly anonymously, in the media? We have a bunch of people who allegedly are worried Trump is going to cause WWIII, but they don’t want to put their names to their concerns because they’re afraid of what it might do to their careers. Here’s a free clue, assholes: your career won’t be worth shit after WWIII.
PPCLI
I still remember the pathetic, confused look on Reagan’s face when he ran out of time in his closing statement in the 1st debate vs Mondale. It was painfully obvious that he was suffering serious cognitive decline.
Roger Moore
@Trentrunner:
He used to be a thin-skinned bigoted self-centered rapey asshole who could actually talk intelligently about policy. Now he’s a thin-skinned bigoted self-centered rapey asshole who blathers incoherently and can’t even keep his lies straight.
debbie
@raven:
Sweet photo.
Cheryl Rofer
@Anne Laurie:
If it will convince the Republicans to impeach him, I’m all for it!
raven
@debbie: I’m trying to get used to the 7 Plus dual lens camera.
Anne Laurie
@PPCLI:
And that was just fine with the Repubs in charge — as long as Ronnie could hit his mark and repeat a few simple mantras, it didn’t matter to them how much harm might come to the country!
Some of those same Repubs, and their heirs, assumed they could run Trump as a figurehead the same way they’d run ol’ Ronnie. Four more years of looting & pillage! But this ain’t the 1980s, and Trump ain’t even a B-grade actor…
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: when could Trump talk intelligently about policy…?
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
He had also surrounded himself with some halfway competent advisors and kept government agencies fully staffed. Both of those things meant the basic functions of government continued to be handled decently when he stopped paying attention. Trump has chosen the worst cabinet in American history and failed even to nominate people to many of the lower-level posts. The result is a government that’s starting to have problems with basic functions- by design.
NotMax
21st century schizoid man.
(With apologies to King Crimson.)
zhena gogolia
@raven:
They’re looking good!
Elizabelle
@raven: Pet picture! They’re sweet. They’re in their home.
raven
@zhena gogolia: Yea, they are getting old but there’s still fire there.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: yeah, Reagan et al were at least interested in a functioning government. For the most part–they had their share of burn-it-down folks like Gorsuch’s mom.
raven
@Elizabelle: And off to bed. Bohdi is there all night but Lil Bit scratches and chews so much that I usually put her on the floor after an hour or so. They each get 4 mini cookies before lights out so that’s another ritual they love.
Corner Stone
I, for one, am personally enjoying the incredibly finely parsed “denial” statement by Mattis that was issued today. So nicely done.
NotMax
@raven
“You go lie on the stairs.”
“No, it’s your turn.”
;)
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
Trump could actually talk intelligently about policy 30 years ago. He still had the same atrocious personality, but he had obviously paid attention and knew something about the policy issues of the day.
Corner Stone
@Cheryl Rofer: They all want Corker to shut up.
Anne Laurie
@Roger Moore:
Who will bell this cat? IMO, this is still in the trial-run phase; the Permanent GOP Apparatus is testing to see whether the senility defence works now that the at-least-he’s-not-Obama or the but-her-emails or the AIIEE!!!-scary-brown-furriners’n’college-kid-anarchists! deflections aren’t dong the job any longer.
They seem to believe this is eleven-dimensional chess, and not just the kind of serial phantasizing every three-year-old caught with a faceful of crumbs and a broken cookie jar attempts.
Major Major Major Major
@raven: cuties.
@Roger Moore: gotcha.
RSA
I don’t have any deep political knowledge or instincts, but the Corker interview was three days ago. I don’t think it’s at all clear that it was an inflection point. If it turns out to be, great! But, um, what kind of political measure was increasing before but is decreasing now?
MomSense
@raven:
Awww. How is lil bit feeling?
mike in dc
I’d rather Trump not get thrown out for senility. I’d rather he face impeachment, removal, indictment and conviction. If he goes senile in stir, oh well.
Major Major Major Major
@RSA: can’t “inflection point” apply to the derivative? Maybe the author is anticipating people to jump on the “trump is insane” bandwagon faster in the near future.
Mai.naem.mobile
@raven: Cool picture.
Ruckus
@raven:
Looking good, they are. Hope they are feeling as good as they look.
RSA
@Major Major Major Major: Could be! I hope so. Maybe I’m cynical–there have been so many times I’ve thought, “There’s no way Trump can survive this.”
Corner Stone
The increasing velocity of leaks and statements that characterize a mentally unstable POTUS should scare the shit out of everyone. And the fact that R elected officials still care more about passing a tax cut so they have something to run on in 2018 and 2020 is terrifying for the future of our republic.
Mai.naem.mobile
I dont know why this has become such a big issue now. Plenty of people thought there was something seriously wrong with his mental status during the campaign. During the campaign. And its the 9th month of his presidency and now they decide that there’s something wrong with him? Really?
Also the pharmacist is full of shit saying he was only using Alzheimers as an example. I bet some Senator is on a psych med which is being used off label for Alzheimers and he knows that and that is what he was referring to.
Zinsky
This reptile (Trump) needs to be taken down by whatever means necessary. He is an existential threat to humankind.
different-church-lady
@Mai.naem.mobile:
Egypt. Major waterway. Pun based on. All that all that.
InternetDragons
I’m pretty much reality-focused about how bad things are with this administration, but sometimes I see new information that increases my overall sense of horror. This is a conversation between Robert Reich and a Republican former member of Congress:
https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/918282269630091266
Major Major Major Major
@RSA: yeah I mean it could also be another journalist who’s bad at math.
Jeffro
@NotMax:
Made me think of ’21st century digital (tweeting) boy’ (apologies to BR) but the lyrics don’t work…needz moar “me Me ME” to fit Trumpov
Jeffro
@Corner Stone: it’s always darkest before the dawn. Or just before it goes pitch-black.
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: he also failed at his one (one!) job for the first year, helping them loot all that sweet Medicaid money.
J R in WV
@raven:
That’s a photo from your phone? They’ve stepped ahead a generation, haven’t they? Good job!
Jeffro
@InternetDragons: They all see what’s (possibly) coming, yet none of them have enough courage or incentive to act.
Where’s our March For Shame (On The GOP)? Or a simple “No More Pretending” rally, where every marcher carries signs about how mentally and emotionally unfit for office Trumpov is? Think that would get the message across?
I’m sure the media will attend and blame Hillary for not sounding the alarm loudly enough…
Major Major Major Major
Oh no, all this smoke has given Samwise the sniffles!
No Drought No More
@Major Major Major Major: I’m in Guerneville due west of the monsters, and the skies were blue and clear most of the day here. It wasn’t until a backfire was intentionally lit atop Bennett Peak a couple of hours ago that we began to get haze and smell smoke again. Looks like your photo was taken off of Page Mill Rd. somewhere..
Felony Govt (formerly Old Broad in California)
Supposedly Shitgibbon tweeted, mocking Justin Trudeau for celebrating Thanksgiving 6 weeks early (and later deleted it). It’s getting bad when you can’t tell the truth from a piece in the Onion.
satby
@raven: They’re looking good! Hope Lil Bit is doing ok.
It looks like my youngest dog may end up going first. Waiting to find out if the tumor on his ear is a hemangioma or a hemangisarcoma. Poor little guy is only about 5 or 6 but if it’s a sarcoma the prognosis is poor.
different-church-lady
@Major Major Major Major: People jumped on the “Trump Is Insane” bandwagon before the election — his voters love him for it.
Major Major Major Major
@No Drought No More: up by the old observatory next to the golf course.
NotMax
@different-church-lady
Ivanka spending nights browbeating designers to come up with a line of designer straitjackets ASAP?
dmsilev
@Felony Govt (formerly Old Broad in California): It’s really frightening that it’s entirely believable that he could be both that ignorant and that arrogant.
rikyrah
Maddow reporting on Puerto Rico.
That mega ship- the USS Comfort…
Is treating only 7 patients.
SEVEN!!!!
They are trying to kill these American citizens.
Cacti
In all my early middle-aged life, I’ve never heard a sitting POTUS from either party refer to freedom of the press as “disgusting”, and threaten to use the power of the state to silence dissent.
Resist.
Corner Stone
@Jeffro: I find it’s always darkest right before I have to get up to go pee. And then when I try to get back in bed to grab the last batch of minutes of sleep it’s like klieg lights were turned on outside my window.
NotMax
@Cacti
Not publicly, but Nixon attempted to apply pressure to the FCC.
satby
@different-church-lady: well, to be fair, they were imagining he was crazy like a fox at getting liberals upset. They didn’t think he was actually crazy (meaning mentally ill).
Gin & Tonic
@Corner Stone: No shit, huh?
SFAW
@Jeffro:
Or with a certain Demented Insane Motherfucker having the launch codes, just before it gets as bright as a thousand suns?
SFAW
@satby:
You seem to think that would matter to them. Cleek’s Law doesn’t have a sub-corollary stating “but only if the guy pissing off liberals is sane.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Er… wow
So Trump himself thinks he lost his audience to a younger, crazier more corrupt Republican?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That’s the thing, Trump is a horribly transparent liar and he’s been talking just crazy random nonsense all this week.
Frankensteinbeck
I’ve been saying this every time someone says Trump’s followers are loyal to him. He provided their best fix yet for white supremacy. That is their only loyalty to him. I’m glad it’s starting to catch on.
@rikyrah:
I’ve been saying that, too.
randy khan
None of this comes as a surprise.
And that may be the most depressing seven words I’ve written in a while.
satby
@SFAW: but they can’t count on him now to just stick it to “those people”. He’s demonstrated that he’ll shaft anyone because he’s unstable. They’re still hoping for the goodies they were promised, but he’s not delivering. A few die-hard nuts will go down with his ship, but he’s dropping supporters. Just the right trigger, and the stampede away from him could start. And I hope a few other Repukes go down then too.And
Edited oopses
SFAW
@satby:
Are you talking about Congress? Or just the fuckwads who voted for him? (Serious question, actually.)
satby
@SFAW: the fuckwads. Until the voting fuckwads get more disillusioned, the profiles in corruption that are the Republicans in Congress won’t do anything for fear of a primary from the Bannon crowd.
NotMax
@satby
“Please exit the loony bin an an orderly manner. No pushin’, no shovin’ no Russian.”
Sadly though, they’ve got too much invested in madness futures to pull out of that market.
dmsilev
@SFAW: Congress is motivated largely by self-interest, and in particular self-preservation. If the GOP Reps and Senators think that associating with Trump is going to cause them serious difficulty in 2018, they’re going to do the whole rats-abandoning-the-sinking-ship thing. The problem for us, though, is that their calculus includes whether or not they’ll have serious difficulty in the primary, and in a lot of deep-red districts, opposing Trump would be a ticket to drawing an even crazier nutcase as a primary challenger.
Steeplejack
Registering my disapproval of this defence jiggery-pokery.
Ladyraxterinok
@Major Major Major Major: Is that a pond/lake in the 1st pic that is now totally dry in the 2nd??
Ruckus
@SFAW:
I take that as a hopeful desire, like wining the power ball. You don’t really expect it to ever happen but it’s a nice thought that for once something might go in the correct direction.
No Drought No More
@Major Major Major Major: OK, thanks… I know the spot. Now I know what my sister in San Francisco was talking about when I spoke with her earlier today.
Frankensteinbeck
@satby:
I think it’s more complicated than that. The Republican voters were promised that sticking it to ‘those people’ would make everything great for themselves. They were promised that because they demanded to be told that, because it’s what they already believe. Frankly, most of their politicians probably believe it, and I’m sure Trump does. I’m betting there was no shortage of confusion in congress when they got hit with the fact that repealing Obamacare and gutting Medicaid would not make their constituents happy, and that they could not seem to come up with an alternative that would both hurt people and make rural whites better off. Trump has been doing a better job than any president in living memory at sticking it to ‘those people’, and the biggest block of Republican voters love it. But they’re not getting their own bennies, and Trump is a laughing-stock rather than showing us liberals that a whiny, ignorant racist is a perfect being, and liberals are actually getting as pissed off as conservatives for the first time they can remember. They hate being publicly shamed. Some just dig in, some get quiet and dispirited. They also know quite well they lost the popular vote by a large margin, and are desperate for the claim of legitimacy, which they lose a chunk of if Trump is impeached. I’m not really sure what the overall effect will be, either for GOP voters or congresspeople.
satby
@NotMax: Some still think they’re going to come out ahead, but most people, especially conservatives, aren’t comfortable with chaos.
I honestly thought it would take longer for the disgust to get to this level and it’s still less than a year in. We have a long way to go, but I get hopeful when people like Corker and Jen Rubin are openly calling Trump unfit, because they’re the canaries in the mine.
Major Major Major Major
@Ladyraxterinok: it’s artificial and there are some issues with an endangered salamander so they don’t fill it any more. First pic is from spring.
ETA the relevant thing being that it rains in spring
NotMax
@satby
Nine months of gestation has given birth to the fragile twins aversion and discontent. Now they must be nurtured to grow hale and hearty.
satby
@Frankensteinbeck:
All of that, yes. Things aren’t better for the majority of morons that voted for Drumpf AND instead of being humbled the liberals are getting louder and turning out in enough numbers to intimidate the white power assholes. And the proposals about healthcare would clearly screw a lot of them, so will the tax reform. They were supposed to get goodies just like the moochers do, instead they’re finding out that their hero can’t deliver.
clay
@RSA:
An inflection point is where the concavity of a curve changes; it’s not a directional change. In other words, it’s where a graph appears to be flattening out, but then starts to get steeper and steeper. So in this metaphor, this might be the tipping point where more and more people will come to the conclusion that Trump cannot stay in office.
The thing is — if you’re at or near an inflection point, you can’t tell. The graph would just look flat from your vantage point. So it’s probably too early to tell right now what’s going to happen. (Katrina was Bush’s inflection point — the endless war had slowly ebbed his approval ratings and the storm changed the decrease from slow to fast — but it took a while for that to become evident.) But the more people talk about it, the more likely the idea will take hold.
(FYI — you were talking about extrema… mins and maxes. Inflection points and extrema are collectively called “critical points” — places where the tangent line has a slope of zero.)
Frankensteinbeck
@satby:
Baked into this is that they know Trump and congress can deliver, if they want. Racism cannot fail, it can only be failed. They’re not going to stop believing that stomping on minorities (I’ll leave out the list of slurs) will fix everything that’s wrong, so it must be their leaders betraying them.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
As I see it, the only way impeachment is even possible is if drumpf does something absolutely, stupendously, earth shatteringly destructively moronic. Not that he isn’t capable of that, but once that’s done, then what? Will congress act before that? I don’t think so. It may be why someone Corker(sp) is quitting, most of congress won’t think of attacking someone in their own party with an impeachment or they actually like drumpf and what he’s doing. I’d bet a good deal of the Mercer’s money that congresspeople have discussed impeachment. Not all, even of current day republicans in congress, are completely fucking nuts.
NotMax
@Ruckus
Worrisome indeed is that the Republican party mantra of “Problem is we didn’t run someone conservative enough” will mutate to “Problem is we didn’t nominate someone nutso enough.”
Mnemosyne
@clay:
After Katrina hit, a lifelong Republican that I worked with came into the office one morning and was literally livid that American citizens were being left to die — he actually turned that purplish-red color that “livid” designates, and it was particularly noticeable because he was a white guy who shaved his head.
That’s how I knew Republicans were turning on Bush.
satby
@Frankensteinbeck: I think it’s started to dawn on a few of the sharper Drumpf supporters that they got played. Traitor in Chief promised lower cost access to healthcare available to everyone with no pre-existing conditions, Republicans and Drumpf horked up multiple failures of bills that broke every promise made.
Essentially the same story about “tax reform”. And to rub salt in the wound, even the bad bills couldn’t get passed, Obamacare lives.
If the feeling of being had cracks into their conscious, that will be a bitter, angry crowd.
Frankensteinbeck
@NotMax:
The direction is ‘more openly racist.’ It probably will not stop. Trump-style incompetence and insanity are embedded in that, however.
EDIT – @satby:
Possibly true. They will blame everything except their own flawed, disgusting, hateful beliefs. That can include the leaders who must not be carrying those beliefs out right, since it’s not working.
clay
There’s something odd in the Vanity Fair article. The sources badmouthing Trump are anonymous, but that’s to be expected. But the sources denying the allegations are also anonymous. Examples:
There’s no real reason that a White House official should be anonymous to defend the President. It’s weird.
Tenar Arha
@Trentrunner: This is all true.
I have however, been trying to figure out why I want to believe that there is something physically wrong with him. And I think it’s hoping for that as opposed to just plain “lifetime asshole is evil.” Because otherwise then I’m realizing that there’s little to no hope for a quick 25th Amendment if there is no physical ailment. Which just leaves us Impeachment, and no hope for it ASAP because depending on the GOP for anything is a sucker bet.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@satby: I gather he used a group of truckers as a prop today to sell a cut in the rate on pass-throughs and elimination of the estate tax. Indie truckers are apparently the new family farmers, because our 71 year old president likes to play vroom-vroom
Ruckus
@NotMax:
Afraid so. Conservatives never really liked government, even when it was/is good for them. Destroying it is fine with them. Something about breaking some eggs to make something…….. The current crop has no real idea how to govern, because they don’t give a fuck about it at all. They like anarchy, it’s their ideal. They like guns because with anarchy one is at the mercy of their own wits, which is a fine example of why it doesn’t work, look at the people that think it’s peachy keen in the first place. It’s why zero sum is their basis of knowledge of how things work, they are morons. And that’s the majority of elected conservatives, let alone the base.
Duane
If you don’t want to raise your blood pressure to new and exciting levels, don’t watch the Frontline episode about Pruitt and the EPA.
No further comment.
Mnemosyne
@Duane:
Fuck Frontline. They were all in on hating Hillary and did a Trump episode that was a fucking tongue bath.
SFAW
Re: various
While I want to believe that the Trump-voting fuckwads will suddenly start doing things in their own self-interest — irrespective of whether “those people” get some/any type of bennies, I’m not sure that enlightened self-interest has been a motivator during the last 15-20 years for the Rethug base. It seems — to me at least — that Cleek’s Law has been a far more powerful motivator. More than happy to be proved wrong, of course.
As far as Congress “stepping up”: only when they see President Demented Insane Motherfucker as a threat to their continued ride on the Grifting & Gravy Train. Which could certainly happen, as it did with Nixon. But left to his own devices, the Head Suck-Up a/k/a ZEGS will never file for impeachment. Well, maybe not never, but …
SFAW
On a cheerier note: I was running errands today, and ended up behind a car with a bumper sticker with a Russian-originated saying: “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
Something about that quote bothered me, so I
runnedrand the asshole off the road.Well, not really, but I did consider it for a moment. Fucking morons, they’re everywhere, even in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts.
randy khan
@clay:
It *is* weird, but no doubt it’s because the person saying it didn’t want other Republicans to think he or she was crazy.
PIGL
@Mnemosyne: but I’ll give you dollars to vehicles that he still a Republican. And if so, spect fully submit that his lividneas didn’t mean shit
sm*t cl*de
@PPCLI:
Yep. It is acceptable now to say that Reagan was away in the twilight zone during his second term, but the chatter among clinicians was all “Mr Brain has left the building” right back during his first presidential run.
Chris Green
I’d be curious what Vanity Fair’s policy is on anonymous sources. What possible justification could there be for granting this white house spokesperson anonymity to just say their boss is OK?
les
@satby:
Which is unfortunately no change.
hueyplong
I’ll believe this “lifelong Republican says blah, blah” crap when one of them votes Democratic in an election.
Scant evidence of that in 2016.