Mr. President, we do believe Director Comey erred in his handling of Clinton investigation. We just don't believe that's why you fired him. https://t.co/rzuEY3c34F
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) May 10, 2017
Unfortunately, I find David Roberts’ theory all too plausible…
3. It is to interpret behavior as issuing from, and evidence of, desires, beliefs, intentions, fears, etc.
— David Roberts (@drvox) May 10, 2017
9. Here's the thing: Trump, by all indications, does not have beliefs, intentions, etc. that are stable, persistent across contexts.
— David Roberts (@drvox) May 10, 2017
11. He seeks domination. That's all. He does not care about, or even seem cognizant of, lying, reversing himself, switching loyalties, etc.
— David Roberts (@drvox) May 10, 2017
14. Here's the problem: healthy adults are simply *not accustomed to dealing w/ someone like that*. It is a rare pathology …
— David Roberts (@drvox) May 10, 2017
18. … to see it as reflective of stable, persistent beliefs, intentions, and plans. They read "mind" into his behavior. Can't help it.
— David Roberts (@drvox) May 10, 2017
28. … and then immediately forgetting about it, connecting it to nothing else. Thus the confusion why everyone keeps bringing it up.
— David Roberts (@drvox) May 10, 2017
30. … and that gave him bad feels, made him feel non-dominant. So he made Comey get off his TV. No "mind," just stimulus-response.
— David Roberts (@drvox) May 10, 2017
40. … but there's no predicting or reasoning w/ pure animal impulse. ToM is useless. Only containment or removal will work. </fin>
— David Roberts (@drvox) May 10, 2017
(Double-clicking on any of the above tweets should take you to the unabridged thread in Roberts’ feed.)
Ruckus
This seems like one of the best takes on dumpf. Because if you look carefully there really isn’t anything like a normal human being there. And hasn’t been for a long, long time.
Maybe we need to bring in a jackass trainer to head the drumpf reporting.
Raoul
OMG this. Shit, I was just about to go to bed, but I read this whole tweetstorm earlier today, and it was why I was so down in the earlier how ya doin’? thread here.
This scares me more than just about anything. Ahhhg. Back to netflix maybe…
RLChina (big Mango)
Indeed I have known a couple of folks like this and it is maddening to deal with them.
TenguPhule
I’m good with removal.
In any form. At this point none of us can afford to be picky.
Major Major Major Major
I’ve long wondered if Trump has theory of mind.
Fester Addams
If Dr. Vox is right, our First Mental Defective is in for some very unpleasant months ahead. Sadder, our Republican Congress’s only priority appears to be making sure the least among us, the poor, the sick, suffer more.
Aleta
Maddening to see the press labor so long over his intentions, look for signs of improvement, and claim I and J can temper him. Just like all the time a person can spend debating oneself or others about an abuser.
Aleta
@Major Major Major Major: I’m thinking, No.
Achrachno
@Major Major Major Major: Does one need a mind to have a theory of mind? Yes, seems the right answer to that. Therefore, …
hellslittlestangel
So basically Trump isn’t even cognitively developed enough to have an Id. He’s just a brain stem with a giant orange blob attached to it.
jacy
This is what I’ve been saying till I’m blue in the face. Trump has no strategy, no beliefs. He has a lack of understanding of object permanence. He doesn’t lie so much as not understand that things he says aren’t true, because when he’s saying them they are absolutely true inside his head. People aren’t accustomed to dealing with someone like this because it’s so disorienting. They keep wanting things to make sense in a framework that just doesn’t exist for him.
No One You Know
Also seems to make him capable of doing awful things, criminal things, but not be aware of them as such. And therefore not able to learn from them, either.
So how do you hold him responsible, if he lacks the ability to be self-aware beyond the minimal description given above?
amk
shorter tweetstorm – twitler is plain a whacko nutjob and not fit for any office, let alone presidency.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Ruckus:
Yeah, I’ve been saying all along that his personal relationships and business history indicate that he lurches through life from moment to moment, failing most decisisions whether large or petty. The thing which enables him to emerge mostly personally unscathed has traditionally been the insulation of the wealth he was born to and the obsequiousness of courtiers enamored of that wealth.
And you’re all correct – that makes him chaotically bad and ultimately even more destructive.
Elizabelle
@ Adam Silverman: Suspect you have “racked out,” but you might want to send Josh Marshall of Talking Points an email. He’s calling for Rod Rosenstein’s head. That the craven Trump admin played all of us and set Rosenstein up as fall guy does not seem to have occurred to Josh. Neither does the fact that Rosenstein’s memo stops short of recommending firing.
Josh’s take kind of turns on timing; what if Trump already had the demanded Comey letter in hand and, after that, Comey came to Rosenstein requesting the additional funding and staff. Josh doesn’t go there.
I appreciated your framing our take on the memo, that it does not call for firing. If Rod Rosenstein is a careful and ethical public servant, we want to back him up while he’s at Justice. We need moar qualified people there, not less. Sessions is a hack. Who knows what he and his minions are doing over there.
Aleta
@hellslittlestangel: reptilian part of the brain. strike first.
Monty
I agree with what Dave Roberts says….despite that I fucking hate twitter for the ‘thought in 140 characters’ element.
Homo sapiens are far more more geared to the emotional rather than the rational, considered response; indeed, despite the tendency of liberals and some conservatives to cite logic as a guiding principle, people by and large are not rational actors.
Elizabelle
@jacy: Lack of understanding object permanence. Yee gawds.
No doubt our adversaries are watching this closely as they make any nefarious plans. We are beyond lucky nothing huge, international or environmental or accidental, has happened yet. That’s actually kind of unusual.
@No One You Know:
My take too. Trump is not of sound mind, and what mind he has deteriorated markedly over the years.
If I were in charge, I’d see that McConnell and others taking advantage of this situation were executed for treason. The turtle should hang. Maybe baby blues Ryan too.
Putting us all at risk for the purposes of enacting a major tax cut for the wealthy. Treason.
EBT
Been doodling in mspaint for my interactive fiction so much for the last three days my mouse hand hurts.
Elizabelle
I read the tweets and it dodges the issue. OK, so Trump just wanted to make Comey go away. That does not negate that (a) Comey had a real, ongoing investigation into possible corruption going and (b) Trump is very aware of that, with whatever mind he possesses, and Trump has had an underlying fear of being found out throughout this.
WRT journalists: lets them off the hook too, doesn’t it? They’re not merely normalizing an unfit president. They’re trying to analyze his behavior and …. it’s just so hard. If a journalist cannot see that Trump is unfit, period, that journalist has nothing else to sell me.
I don’t doubt that Trump has grave cognitive difficulties, now combined with incipient dementia.
Why aren’t we looking more at why someone like that became the GOP nominee and (allegedly) won an Electoral College victory? The rest is kind of window dressing.
??? Martin
@Elizabelle: I think you’re misreading Josh. He noted pretty early on that the memo didn’t call for Comey being fired. That said, he wrote the memo anyway, claiming that he never intended for it to be used in thus manner. Ok, fine, but you’d have to be a fucking idiot to believe that, and Josh knows well enough that Rosenstein isn’t that stupid. My guess is that he was lied to – told by Sessions it was for one purpose and then before anyone could leak that it has been written for whatever purpose, Comey was fired. The reasonable thing for Rosenstein to do was to leak the memo and his believed purpose today or tomorrow as cover. I think Trump deliberately moved too fast for that to happen.
Calling Rosenstein out as being too smart to fall for this instead puts intent on him, and the only way out for him is to come clean in some way. Calling for his firing adds leverage.
CM
You quote: “Most likely explanation re: Russia is not some deep, secret plot, but … DT saying yes to something that felt good in the moment …”
To which I would add, Trump over and over again said “yes” to deals involving tens and probably hundreds of millions of dollars from Russia, Ukraine, and other such places. We know this thanks to a couple of comments from his sons.
As someone once said, “Follow the money.” I think the FBI and other agencies have been following the money flowing through Trump Tower for years.
Elizabelle
@??? Martin: I may be.
WRT blogpost topic: Here’s a link to David Roberts’ article in Vox, from late September 2016.
The question of what Donald Trump “really believes” has no answer
It is a category error.
I find following long twitter threads to be exasperating. Give me a well written blogpost any day.
And I’m not really interested in all things Trump. Just on how we survive and prosper, while in process of getting rid of or past him.
I guess we are just lucky his mind is so disordered, and his staff so incompetent.
romeo24
This is why trying to translate Trump’s utterances into other languages doesn’t just cause a headache: it leads to mistranslations because the translator, who is usually a “normal” person, can’t believe (on an almost subconscious level) that the original English is so nonsensical. They therefore compensate and try to make order out of chaos, inadvertently making T sound more intelligible that he actually is.
Chet Murthy
I agree with Roberts, that it’s foolish to ask “what does Trump believe”. What matters is “what does Trump want?” B/c that tells us how to understand his behaviour. To that end here’s a link about sociopaths. He checks nearly all the boxes.
Sadly, the prescription amounts to “run away! run awaaaaay!!” Which isn’t very helpful, given that Yertle & ZEGS have tied us all to the railroad tracks.
Mike G
There’s a thin line between dementia and Republican ideology.
Chet Murthy
@romeo24: Uh, actually, ISTR reading that his speech is quite decipherable. The thing is, it’s not normal speech. Many people have written about it. Here’s an example article from Slate.
Elizabelle
Shout out to greennotGreen’s family: stay strong. We are with you.
Shout out to yarrow: come back! We miss you.
romeo24
@Chet Murthy: Yes, but this article is talking about how T comes across to (some) English speakers. Translators (who are usually translating from English to their native language) are not translating his words as is. They are trying to interpret what he is saying (and his utterances are actually hard to understand for non-native speakers because they don’t follow traditional sentence construction), and in most cases “polishing” it so that it makes more sense in their language. This is usually happening quite unconsciously. The end result is that T sounds more “coherent” or “normal” in foreign languages than he does in English.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Making LA pretty for the IOC:
Griffith Observatory in LA2024 colors, and
LA Panorama.
CM
From Robert Costa, via Kevin Drum: “Breaking: Rosenstein threatened to resign after WH cast him as prime mover to fire Comey, @SariHorwitz scoops http://wapo.st/2q4FDGq
11:32 PM – 10 May 2017″
It looks like Rosenstein may have reclaimed and reattached his balls.
Chet Murthy
@romeo24: I agree with you, that translators have difficulty, and end up making him sound more ….rational/reasoned than he actually is. My point, I think, is that in -English-, he fails to sound as rational/reasoned, NOT because he’s simple, or brain-damaged, or what-have-you, but b/c his speech is designed to reach a different level of his audience’s brains, than we normally expect.
Fair Economist
@??? Martin: The thought has crossed my mind that Rosenstein is being very Machiavellian. By getting Comey bumped he’s in charge of the investigation. It’s compatible with him being anti-Trump and offended by Comey’s actions during the campaign – Comey’s gone, but not necessarily the investigation.
Elizabelle
@Chet Murthy: Thanks. Looks worth a longer read.
Skimmed it, and wonder how much of Trumpspeak is Fox Newsspeak run through a collapsing mind. The vague sense of threat, but trying to sound strong.
Would be interesting research to video some oldsters who are mainlining Fox News. Over an extended period. Watch their cognitive and linguistic (and social skills) decline in real time. Then: control group. Uh huh.
Elizabelle
@Fair Economist: If so, that’s lovely. Bring on an anti-Trump Justice official who’s Machiavellian and can outthink his target/fearless leader. Viva Rosenstein!
Bruce K
Some days Trump seems less like a human being than a disaster event in a bad suit with a spray-tan and a combover. He keeps putting me in mind of the Chernobyl meltdown.
By which I mean: Chernobyl reactor 4 had a flawed design, but there were many safeguards in place to prevent a disaster. But in its administrators’ obsession with accomplishing a singular goal (in this case, making sure that the reactor’s pumps could smoothly switch over to emergency power), they ignored or outright bypassed damn near all of them, and kept the reactor running in a configuration where every safety protocol said it should have been shut down cold. As a result, it suffered a power surge, heat surge, massive steam explosion, fire, radioactive debris and fallout as far away as Sweden, the neighborhood rendered uninhabitable for centuries.
When you come down to it, the Republican Party has been removing one safeguard after another in the pursuit of a singular goal – in their case, Republican control of all the levers of power in the United States. They deemed the ascendance of Donald Trump to the presidency as an acceptable risk, despite all the mounting evidence of the threat posed by giving such power to such a man, and now they’re looking at a meltdown and they can’t hit the scram switch or it’ll destroy what they’ve risked so much to accomplish.
If the Trump administration truly melts down, the bastards who bypassed all the safeties to make it possible deserve whatever horrors await them. I’m more concerned about the damage the fallout will do to everyone else around.
Elizabelle
@Bruce K: Great analogy. Thanks!
TS
Given that all he could say when asked about the firing – in the language of a 6 year old – “He wasn’t doing a good job” – it is easy to conclude – there is no there there.
As was said on an earlier thread – it is easy to see why he went bankrupt so many times. His solution to any issue is to remove it – or remove himself from it. Does not translate well into international issues.
romeo24
@Chet Murthy: I see what you’re saying. That’s a very interesting, and plausible, interpretation of his “juvenile-sounding” speech. And it is very jarring to hear him speak because he doesn’t “sound” like how a president should sound (see also, Twitter). But I have trouble persuading my non-native English speaking partner how truly “not normal” he sounds because of the translation issue. I even tried throwing a Trump speech through Google Translate to show said partner how awful he sounded (subjective judgment, I know, but are we all supposed to be satisfied with a grade 6 reading level?), and even the Google program polished it enough to make it sound way better than the original.
laura
Sending out warm wishes to greennotGreen and her family.
Grace and peace to each of you.
Chet Murthy
@romeo24: Heh. Some things don’t translate, eh? I remember when working in France, I had American (french hist) grad student friends who once went to see a Jerry Lewis movie. Now, Jerry’s -revered- in France for his comedy. My friends remarked that everybody laughed at the physical gags. Not at the words. Guess the humor didn’t translate so well.
I’ve seen the same thing — once saw The African Queen subtitled in French, and it was paltry compared to the English audio. And ditto in the other direction — the version of _Cyrano_ with Depardieu is … well, it’s sublime in French, and only passable in English subtitles or dubbing.
romeo24
@Chet Murthy: And also explains the popularity of Mr Bean in say Germany vs Blackadder in England. OT but I only realized recently that Rowan Atkinson had a speech impediment. Can’t help but think that it must have taken some courage to choose a career in comedy!
CarolDuhart2
He has a family history of cognitive decline. Of course. we don’t know when the onset was for them, but being President I believe has accellerated it. As a private citizen, Trump could have had work-arounds: hired Kushner and others to handle things he couldn’t handle, become an associate Producer and just come in once in a while to sign things (for as long as that was possible), and finally just quietly retired when that no longer worked. But then at least he could move at a pace slow enough that he could handle and last until 80. As President, he can’t hide, he’s constantly aggravated by something or other and is faced with things he can’t understand let alone handle. He won’t last until 75 at this pace.
I fully expect that someday they will find him in a fetal position somewhere, unable to even do basic things for himself.
Ian
@Monty:
I dislike twitter for the reasons shown here. Any tweet storm that takes 40 tweets should be an article or a blog post. If you need 140*40 words to tell a story your using the wrong medium.
I also disagree of the ToM analysis presented here. Ill Douche damn well knows he is enriching himself and his family, and he damn well knows it is wrong. If he didn’t know it was wrong he would have released his tax returns to shut everyone up.
amk
@Bruce K: Good analogy.
Elizabelle
@Ian: Yup. You saw through the psychobabble bullshit. Thanks.
Elizabelle
@CarolDuhart2: Trump should have listened to Howard Stern!
And shame on his family for enabling this. From what we are all now seeing, they could have stopped this with some carefully worded, albeit loving, public statements.
Fly on the wall wonders if they ever discuss that now, even with Trump, who is likely miserable even while he’s making all our lives insecure and unhappier by his very presence.
aimai
@hellslittlestangel: No he is all ID and no Ego–no self just ego defenses: denial, projection, somaticization, anger, dissociation, etc..etc..etc…
SFAW
Although the Roberts thing was interesting reading, in the end it’s pretty much bullshit re: Shitgibbon and Comey. It’s not that Shitgibbon didn’t like that Comey was getting more air time, it’s that he perceived Comey as a threat to his continued existence as Grifter-in-Chief.
Sally Yates fired because she was on TV too much? Preet Bharara fired for the same reason? If you believe that, then HAVE I GOT A DEAL FOR YOU!!!
Although it’s amusing (in a dark way) to believe that Shitgibbon is so insane/demented/infantile — and he’s probably some mix of all those — that all he cared about was Comey getting higher Nielsens (so to speak), the “threat” is likely the driver. A high percentage of his nutjob tweets have been responses to threats real and perceived. Yeah, there’s the proverbial metric fuck-tonne of dominance issues, but sometimes survival instincts beat out the desire for dominance.
And, the usual disclaimer: not a shrink, don’t play one on TV, etc.
ET
I can go with Roberts. The problem is getting everyone else there. This basically means journalists and Republicans.
SFAW
@aimai:
I don’t know if the term is still in use, but shouldn’t that be Super-Ego? (However it may be spelled.)
Waspuppet
@RLChina (big Mango): I was married to someone like this. I saw Trump for what he is from a mile away, and I’m completely mystified as to why so few others can. Though I guess it’s a good thing that not many other people evidently have experience with this type.
Martin O’Malley said a President Trump would be like a monkey with a machine gun. That’s basically a pithy way of describing this. There’s no point trying to figure out why he’s shooting where he’s shooting or where he’ll shoot next.
Yoda Dog
@Ian: One can lack theory of mind and still understand, without caring, that something is objectively unlawful. He just doesn’t care. He doesn’t “know its wrong”, per se, but only “knows” that snowflakes like you and I are just jellies we can’t do all the badass fraudulent shit he can get away with, perhaps. Reducing the man’s point down to “psychobabble bullshit” feels a little too easy. It’s a pretty strong theory that carries alot of water when weighed against the pos’s inexplicable behaviors, imho. I don’t think its letting him off the hook in any way, either. He’s still a vapid monster that has committed crimes, and should be punished. He might have the mind of a goldfish, but I still wanna personally see him stroke out for me right there on my teevee machine one day, all the same. Got a bottle of bubbly all ready just in case… Just like Betty! XD
James E Powell
@CM:
Circulating a story that he “threatened to resign” is more propaganda.
He didn’t resign, he remains an at-will employee of Trump. He’s on the team, working for them, not for Americans.
Yoda Dog
@James E Powell: Yea exactly. Im not buying into Rosenstein being this stand-up man of integrity at all. What’s he doing there then in the first place? The question, it begs.
Jerry
@Elizabelle:
Why would they stop this? When all of this is done and over with, the Drumpf family will probably be actual billionaires. This gig is the greatest ATM ever for this family.
Lee
@SFAW:
They were fired for different ‘reasons’ but they all came down to dominance. Yates seems to fit this particularly well as when he signed he EO she had to balls to say ‘NO!’ to the shitgibbon. If you want to put her in your ‘on too much TV’ framework, she was on TV once & that was too much. Since Comey is such a mealy-mouth he was able to last a bit longer.
Seth Owen
@CM: Only if he actually resigns or names a special prosecutor. This is his Eliot Richardson moment.
Seth Owen
All this discussion of Trump’s appalling mental state — or lack thereof — is hardly comforting when I realize he has sole discretion over the nuclear codes. Is there a bigger domination tool than an H-bomb?
artem1s
@Waspuppet: I have been in a relationship with a narcissist and am right with you on this one. Once you have ‘seen’ this behavior you can’t unsee it. But a lot of people have a hard time understanding the wandering attention span issue, let alone the lack of empathy and complete self absorption. His lying is so typical. It’s not really about getting away with something. It’s always about preserving that inner world he has built. Its not enough that he believes it. Everyone around him must believe it and protect it as well.
the one issue that no one seems to have touched on with Comey is something that happened a while ago. He admitted, at the House hearings that his actions probably cost Hillary the election. At that moment, in Trump’s mind, Comey joined the ranks of NeverTrump, NotMyPresident, ImWithHer, etc. He discredited the legitimacy of Trump’s win. He gave credence to idea that Trump didn’t have a chance without the EC. He might as well have held up those pictures of the inauguration and Women’s March and screamed ‘LOSER’. It’s no surprise to me that Trump has been enraged at the sight of Comey ever since. At that moment, Comey was done. Add to it pictures of Obama at the Profiles awards getting lauded and Hillary back in the news announcing she is joining the efforts to flip the House and Trump goes back to square one and starts to unravel. Because someone he thought he had bamboozled and brought into his inner circle, broke ranks. Comey said out loud that the emperor has no clothes. Trump then cut off all contact with the offending party. This is something that narcissists do when they lose control of the narrative. He even did it with Bannon to a degree because of the rumors that he was the one in control. The more people that he cuts off, the less control he will have, the more he will spiral. He has lost the IC, the FBI, and too many career government employees to count. He believes there are leaks in his inner circle. He believes he is being spied on. This has been going on pretty much since day one. Comey was just the biggest fish to get cut off since Flynn. But unlike Flynn, Comey has no reason to go quiet to keep from incriminating himself. He’s going to be all over the airwaves giving his side of the story and now Trump can’t stop him. He is getting worse.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Comey fired for being on TV to much for Trump’s delicate fees makes a lot of sense. Trump gets all his information from Fox News and the man is an idiot.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Seth Owen: Do not the WH Lawyers forced Trump not to phone Flyn, so we can assume the military won’t allow Trump to just launch a nuke because of what Trump just saw on Fox and Friends.
eyelessgame
Chauncey Gardener with a temper.
Another Scott
@artem1s: Just to amplify what you’ve said, and the twitter stream above – nobody should be surprised by this behavior by Donnie. It’s who he is and has been for a long time.
Repost: Mark Bowden at VanityFair in 2015. (I’d post an excerpt, but the HTML is a mess and I don’t have time to clean out the crap.)
And you’re right, he will continue to get worse.
Cheers,
Scott.
Downpuppy
Roberts’ Theory of Mindlessness goes a bit too far when it dismisses the Russia connection on the basis that OS is incapable of conspiracy. The Russia one is longstanding, deep, and Trump generally has enough sense to hide it.
Elizabelle
@artem1s: Perceptive comment.
LOL. Comey got fired for telling the truth.
Elizabelle
@Another Scott: Thank you. That VF article looks fab. Just put the link up in Anne Laurie’s new thread.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well well, my Tanazian friend is telling me her news is saying there are two grand juries looking into this and have named 42 persons of interests, sealed indictments have come down and she is amazed that no American she knows, knows about this. Can a front pager stop with the Trump’s fee fees posts and look into this please?
Ohio Mom
This might not mean much but today’s Cincinnati Enquirer quoted all the area Congressmen, all hardcore Republicans with the exception of Sherrod Brown, on their thoughts on the Comey firing and all but two of them were very troubled.
One of them came right out and said, “My primary concern is that the American people get the facts they deserve from the ongoing (Russian) investigations.” (Brown said pretty much the same thing but we expect that of him.)
For the first time I feel a little hopeful that eventually, Congress will kick Trump out.
In fact, much more hopeful about that than the future of Medicaid.
James Powell
@Ohio Mom:
They’re very troubled but they’re not going to do anything about it.
piratedan
no wonder Trump appeals to the GOP right, he’s all Id, all the time.
SFAW
@Lee:
It’s not MY “TV framework,” it’s Roberts’s. I think the whole “he’s getting more air time than I” (not that Shitgibbon thinks [sic]in a grammatically correct manner) sounds attractive, but is not what was going on.
Be that as it may: I think the dominance issue, although real, and the driver of much of his decision-making [sic], came after the parties in question (Yates, Bharara) started doing a little digging into things.
fuckwit
Narcissists gonna narcissist.
I’ve had to deal with parents, bosses, and customers, who are just like Troll.
He’s a narcissist and he’s all just pure ego, nothing else.