This is the moment that was always destined to come:
The narcissist blames everyone closest to them for his own failures.
Trump will destroy everyone around him en route to being destroyed by his own failings. pic.twitter.com/jtWyaFPiaA
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) February 21, 2018
Phillip Elliott, for Time, “Inside Donald Trump’s Twitter-Fueled Weekend Meltdown”:
White House aides prayed for rain. Inclement weather would mean President Donald Trump would have to take the motorcade to the waiting plane to Florida. That would mean he couldn’t take the helicopter from the South Lawn to Joint Base Andrews, which meant he wouldn’t walk in front of a few dozen waiting reporters who would of course ask him about Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s indictments of 13 Russians for meddling in the 2016 elections.
“If anyone knows a rain dance,” a senior White House official said in the hallway around midday Friday. She didn’t finish the sentence…
This is the daily reality of White House staff members at this moment. Their best hope of averting a crisis — of the legal, political, foreign policy, public relations and familial varieties — is hoping the weather report scuttles an airlift from the South Lawn. In conversations with more than a dozen White House officials and outside advisers, they describe the mood as being grim. Many inside are looking for a way out. Roughly half of them compared it to what they felt when Trump fired FBI Director James Comey last May. None would speak for attribution lest they be seen as publicly disloyal to the President…
Even by Trumpian standards, the President’s weekend in Florida was a class apart. In angry, sometimes profane and occasionally misspelled outbursts, the President gave the world a glimpse into what was going through his head at a moment certain to draw scrutiny for generations. It also brought to light what it’s like to work for this Leader of the Free World who is increasingly feeling isolated.
Already, the week had been a bad one. There were rumors, then reports, that a top deputy on the Trump campaign was ready to plead guilty in Mueller’s probe. A school shooting in Parkland, Florida, left 17 dead not far from the President’s private Mar a Lago club. The President scheduled a Friday evening visit to the community, although White House officials worried that it was a fraught situation for what most aides recognize is figure who doesn’t exactly exude compassion in public…
The President is increasingly angered with his personal and political situations and blames those around him: White House chief of staff John Kelly for the Porter drama; the FBI, even though law enforcement officials have been sharing with the White House lawyers their concerns about the hires; leaders in Congress for not being yes-men; the Attorney General for letting the special counsel exist in the first place; his lawyers for not being more careful with hush money. Ivanka Trump and Kushner have, according to reports, started shopping for a replacement for Kelly — a suggestion Vice President Mike Pence was sent out to deny last week.
Trump’s always formidable temper has been shorter-fused than usual, his willingness to listen less than normal. Some White House officials have stopped speaking up in meetings, knowing it won’t make any difference because Trump is counting on a shrinking circle of those he trusts. Nothing anyone on the National Security Council staff, in the counsel’s office or from across government can outweigh what the President hears from conservatives on cable television or from his social media maven and communications adviser…
The problems were only getting started. The President changed his Twitter picture to one of him flashing a smile and thumbs-up — taken while the President was visiting a hospital where victims of the school shooting were recovering. Other social media accounts featured a grinning President standing next to a young woman in a hospital bed and her medical equipment…
Sarah Sanders says Trump ‘absolutely’ acknowledges Russia meddling, walks it back 2 minutes later https://t.co/5vrH3bb8Vk pic.twitter.com/AsSD3nL9Ie
— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) February 21, 2018
3 stubbly guys named Viktor made the throat slash sign from the back of the room. https://t.co/vCeERRVCh3
— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 21, 2018
Villago Delenda Est
This is catastrophe on a legendary comic opera scale.
The vermin of the Village must never be allowed to forget their role in instigating this idiocy.
opiejeanne
@Villago Delenda Est: Comic opera is more fun for the observer who will not be affected by humorous catastrophes and right now there’s no one in the world who will not be affected. The gods are the only ones laughing.
Corner Stone
The Possum Queen can’t keep it up. I expect her to eventually explode like a character in Total Recall.
sukabi
@Villago Delenda Est: in order to forget something, don’t you first have to acknowledge it? That’s something none of the village idiots will ever do, they’ll rewrite their own histories like they do every other time they cheer on the ghouls.
Ruckus
I only will make one prediction in this entire political system failure.
It will not end well.
No one, not one person will be ahead when this is all said and done. I have no idea what direction it will go tomorrow or the next day or ever except I do know that all of us will suffer for having a system that is so fool tolerant that we can elect one to be the leader. We’ve had many instances over the years to do better and we’ve barely done that but this time we collectively stepped on our genitals and with golf spikes on. Those who voted for this clusterfuck are the most responsible but all of us have dropped the ball over at least the last 50-60 yrs with a system that really can not distinguish between minimally competent even if politically opposite and completely and utterly useless as a member of society. Before that we had people who never should have been elected but for political reasons not for just outright incompetence. But since the 50s we have continued to elect people whose main rational was destruction of the government in the first place. How can a society function without governing? The simple answer is that it cannot. Not in any way, shape or form. We are pathetic as a country, acting like we are superior to everyone else while we allow elections that result in this? Superior? I call bullshit.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
This.
The stooges pie fights or soupy sales, were funny because they were vaudeville, funny at someones expense, primarily their own, but not at everyones. We could laugh at them making fun of themselves. Comic opera or vaudeville, a little better staging or a little more pie. The result is the same.
jl
OK, this is piling on and unfair. I have to defend Trump….
OK.. .look the guy thought he would lose and and didn’t have to worry about what would happen afterwards.
He was probably so busy planning his post-defeat conspiracy wingnut media empire, he forgot to be extra noxious right before the election and he won by mistake.So, he slipped on that one little detail.
That’s all I got. Best I can do, for, now, no I guess. forever.
Edit: I guess it’s a hypothetical defense, since I can’t say I believe it.
Westyny
@Villago Delenda Est: Provided we’re able to escape this idiocy, a thousand times this. FTFNYT needs a truth and reconciliation commission. We’ll move on to CNN (Tapper) and NBC (Todd, Lauer) next. Last out of the dungeon, NPR.
p.a.
Don’t worry Donnie. Army Group Steiner is on its way!
Betty Cracker
Can’t blame Possum Queen for being flustered during the daily lie recital: Her questioner was wearing the same dress!
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@jl:
That might work if he couldn’t just resign. It’s not like Pence wouldn’t be a rubber stamp empty suit.
Major Major Major Major
@jl: dumbass can’t even throw an election right.
@Betty Cracker: yeah I did a double taken when I saw the video preview thumbnail.
jl
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?: If the US had a special troiphy for being the best president ever, to be awarded the moment a president became the best ever, then maybe he would resign. Would have to be a huge shiny trophy, but the country can afford it. Has anyone contacted McConnell and Ryan about the idea?
Edit: huge trophy has to be hauled off with a semi trailer, and put on a special foundation in a Trump property. Gew-gaws and gems and stuff on it. Big life size panel hologram of Trump being president, waving or something around the bottom Might work. Recordings of Trump rally soundbites comes out the top.
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@Ruckus:
I thought this primarily started in the 80s. That’s when the welfare state and the social democratic status quo began to fall apart. It happened for a bunch of reasons, not least of which African Americans and other non-white minorities began to get rights. I also think the fall of the Soviet Union had an effect as well; with no existential outside threat offering an alternative to capitalism, the “cold war consensus” ceased to exist and the rich felt they no longer had to indulge labor.
RandomMonster
@Betty Cracker: She must have felt like her better angel was there, debating her on live TV.
lahke
Are folks going to march on March 24, or are we leaving it to the kids?
RandomMonster
@jl:
A parade of toy military vehicles on a track circles it 24 hours a day.
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?:
Also: the SU really pissed away all that good PR post-WW2 after defeating the Nazis. Could have been a better force for good if not run by assholes.
Jay
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?:
Economically, it started in the ’70’s with the Republican’s adopting Austerian Economics, not because it would work, they knew it wouldn’t, but for the political advantages, as they called it.
On the National Security Side, the ’50’s with the Bomber Gap, then the “B Team”,
On the Identity Politics side, well, the Civil War never ended, did it.
But he may be referencing the zero sum, attack, slander and destroy politics trotted out by McCarthy, that have now become SOP daily Republican Operations.
Chet Murthy
@lahke: Oh hells yeah, I think folks (and me too) are marchin’
Redshift
I am trying so hard not to respond to a Wilmerite right now, because I know no good will come of it, and it’ll just make me keep thinking about it and keep being pissed off. In case you had held out any hope that Wilmerites might engage in some introspection after the Mueller revelations, yeah… no.
There’s an old local Deaniac email list I’m on, which only one guy ever posts anything to. He’s nice enough, but it’s hardly ever anything I haven’t already seen. But today, he posted about a book about Trump’s probably psychological disorders, and this Wilmerite felt he had to respond.
He didn’t mention Wilmer by name, but since the things he’s absolutely certain Democrats need to win is a Wilmerite laundry list, it wasn’t hard to guess. But that’s not the (really) infuriating part.
Did you know that we don’t really need to focus on Trump, because he’s a symptom and not the cause? And Hillary lost because she only ran as “I’m not Trump,” not because of Russians which is “a straw man.” And Democrats didn’t save DACA which they totally could have “forced.”
Yeah, Russia doesn’t matter at all, but it’s really important to re-litigate the 2016 primary and blame Democrats because they haven’t used their magic powers to get everything accomplished while they’re in the minority. You go with that, asshole; the rest of us will be dealing with the real world.
lahke
@Chet Murthy:
Excellent–perhaps the Boston BJ Jackals can meet on the Common. See you under the green balloons!
Redshift
@lahke: I’m going. I think they’ll be all the speakers, and be in front, but I think the rest of us are welcome.
Chet Murthy
@lahke: Uh, wrong coast. SF! *grin*
Betty Cracker
@lahke: We might go again (were last in DC for the Women’s March). Saw on Twitter than George and Amal Clooney donated half a mil to the cause, then Oprah matched it!
Steve in the ATL
@Chet Murthy: which coast are you on—LA or Chicago?
lahke
@Betty Cracker:
Amazing how quickly this has come together–already an impressive list of cities with marches. I’ve just had 3 trips back to back, so I’ll stay local for the march. Have fun in DC, Betty!
No Drought No More
I keep thinking back to Ryan’s admonition to that small group of republican House members to keep their mouths shut tight regarding Roerbacher (sic) and the Russians. They were never to breath a fucking word about it, not even among themselves. And they denied it, until they were cleanly busted.
I suspect that apart- and in ignorance- of Trump’s extensive dealings with Russia, other republican party operatives had likewise opened channels to Russia which were thereupon criminally exploited to further undermine our democracy.
Lest We Ever Forget: this is the party that successfully plotted to commit American troops to a ground war in the mideast a mere 15 years ago next month. They are that sick, which means they are capable of committing any crime..
Mary G
@Betty Cracker: Spielberg matched it, so I kind of feel like my $25 is sad, but these kids are savvy and should use it wisely. They are sleeping on cots somewhere and burning people in Twitter making up lies about them.
Chet Murthy
@Steve in the ATL: LA-side, in SF
JGabriel
Trump’s decompensating.
mai naem mobile
@Westyny: So you don’t even consider Fox a news channel?
jl
@JGabriel:
” Trump’s decompensating.”
OK, but how many times can that happen with a person? Is it like the ‘It’s turtles all the way down’ thing?
Edit: We have an bottomless decompensation spiral with Trump? Or is it more like trap doors?
Jay
@Redshift:
Just send him the screen shots of Wilmer being a wind vane from any number of blogs,
Cut and past is often your friend in dismissing morons, quickly.
eemom
@Mary G:
Your $25 is NOT sad. If anything’s sad, it’s the $500k from those gazillionaires who could give many multiples of that out of their pocket change.
Why don’t they? Well, I’m guessing it’s because those kids aren’t a proven cause celebre yet.
Steve in the ATL
@Chet Murthy: me too! It’s a lovely place—wish I’d bought a home here 20 years ago.
JGabriel
@Corner Stone:
Or Scanners.
jl
@lahke: I’m marching if I can get off work. OK, just checked, it’s a Saturday. OK, I’m in.
JGabriel
@jl:
More like a spiral I think, or unspiralling, but he will hit bottom eventually.
jl
@RandomMonster: Could inflate the Borg-Warner trophy 10 times or so, and make all the faces, and the little man on top into Trump. He might go for it. Best President Evah!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/BorgWarnerTrophy1985.JPG
mai naem mobile
I imagine Dolt45 like one of those monster robot kind of character in an old B/W Sci fi/horror B movie where you see a bunch of wires in the brain crackling every so often and the monster robot does something awful and then shuts down, repeats the cycle as its slowly dying.
scav
@JGabriel: With his demonstrated speed and degree of spin? He’ll dig himself a little extra below bottom as he augers in.
Ruckus
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?:
If you look, not all that closely, it started to happen sooner. Really if you study conservatism it’s always been this way. We have a somewhat modern word for it, libertarianism, but the reality is that conservatives have always hated any government unless it gave them the power so they could have all the money. But the majority of people started to see some level of equality, not racial, hell we aren’t there yet but are closer, but financial. Unions, social programs, SS started in the 30s, a lot of things started to coalesce after WWII, even if they were far, far from perfect or even reasonable. And of course there’s that racial thing that is our major downfall as a country. But since the 80s we’ve seen time after time push backs that stayed because of the media, because of the lying and scare tactics of the republicans and the financial world that gained enough power to dominate our politics at the expense of the common population. That’s why it feels like it started in the 80s to you, that’s when the conservative movement gathered up steam and became what we know them as today. We had a major war just before that with a democratic president going all in, Fuck LBJ, and pushing a lot of people towards Nixon, with his lying ass promise to end the war, which he did years after escalating it and killing a huge number of people. Every republican president after Ike has been horrible, at least LBJ, Fuck Him, got some good things done. Politically this country has been going sideways or down since the end of WWII and most of it was our bullshit sense of world conquers. How many wars since then? How many poor since then? How many unhealthy since then? How many uneducated since then? This maladministration is a straight line culmination of conservatism since the end of WWII. And it sucked donkey balls before that.
Ruckus
@Redshift:
I’m planing on going. Just because I’m an old doesn’t mean I can’t follow decent leaders, whatever their age or gender. If they are going in a good direction and have a clue then following is fine. And besides I’m an old white guy, who the hell other than a moron will follow me?
prostratedragon
A little Haydn.
Chet Murthy
@Ruckus: I guess it’s worth reading around if the kids want olds to attend, but (a) I can’t think why they wouldn’t, and (b) it’s important for us olds to make sure we shout out that The Kids Are Alright, We Want Them On Our Lawns.
Ruckus
@Chet Murthy:
Xactly
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Redshift: remind him how wilmer repeatedly voted against immigration reform and then went on the racist Lou Dobbs show to brag about it.
Caracal
@Corner Stone: One can only hope!
trnc
@Redshift: Ask him if he would feel differently if she had gotten 3 million more votes instead of only 2.9 million.
Rich2506
I’m curious about Sanders’ last comment, the one on arming Ukrainians. What’s that all about? Is Putin okay with starting up a war there?
Fester Addams
Reading stories like this make me wonder if there is a German word for taking pleasure in the misfortune of human garbage.
different-church-lady
“Anowledged”
mozzerb
@Fester Addams: How about Scheissenfreude?
Geeno
@lahke: I know the Geeno clan will be there
clay
Why is Twitter trying to force me to log in to view tweets now?
different-church-lady
@Redshift:
They seldom do nowadays.
Boatboy_srq
@mai naem mobile: Why should we? They are already on record claiming they provide not information but entertainment.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
While it’s all well and fine reading about Trump’s awesome, most best Presidential weekend got pissed on, it’s worth keeping in mind that being the narcissist he is it’s only a matter of time before Trump turns on Putin as some Deep State(tm) conspirator against him and then we have the risk of an all out nuclear war.
jonas
We’ve come a long way when everyone basically acknowledges that the POTUS has had numerous affairs with pr0n stars, paid them hush money, and it’s not even a headline scandal anymore. Thanks evangelicals!
hedgehog mobile
@lahke: Yes.
Peale
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: meh. At this point as long as we prevent our leaders from moving underground before we all vaporize I’m fine with that outcome.
Doug R
@eemom:
Luke 21:1And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, 2 and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. 3 So He said, “Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; 4 for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God,[a] but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had.”
Wyatt Derp
@lahke: Mrs. Derp and I will be in Boston for the march if anyone else is going.