Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

No one could have predicted…

This chaos was totally avoidable.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

“Alexa, change the president.”

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Second rate reporter says what?

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

He really is that stupid.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Fight them, without becoming them!

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

The revolution will be supervised.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Open Thread: How Bad *IS* Trump’s Brain?

Open Thread: How Bad *IS* Trump’s Brain?

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Pretty damned bad!


.

As they say in the news business: Three’s a trend!

The Washington Post:

President Trump has expressed certainty that the special-counsel probe into his campaign’s possible collusion with Russia will be finished by the end of the year, complete with an exoneration from Robert S. Mueller III, according to several friends who have spoken with him in recent days.

Trump has dismissed his historically low approval ratings as “fake” and boasted about what he calls the unprecedented achievements of his presidency, even while chatting behind the scenes, saying no president since Harry Truman has accomplished as much at this point…

In all these instances, as well as other setbacks, Trump has sought to paint the rosiest possible picture of his presidency and his character — and has tried to will others to see it his way, like the big-promises salesman he once was.

Sometimes… Trump simply rejects facts — and his own past admissions — as he spins a new narrative. His critics accuse him of creating an alternative reality, though people close to the president say he is simply a savvy marketer protecting his brand, as any businessman or politician would…

The first year of Trump’s presidency has brought tumult and chaos, including the expanding Russia probe, an absence of major legislative achievements and instances of self-sabotage by the president himself. But in recent days, Trump has been in an unusually upbeat mood, according to friends who visited with him…


.

The NYTimes, of course, prefers to handle the issue more… delicately:


Shortly after his victory last year, Donald J. Trump began revisiting one of his deepest public humiliations: the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape of him making vulgar comments about women.

Despite his public acknowledgment of the recording’s authenticity in the final days of the presidential campaign — and his hasty videotaped apology under pressure from his advisers — Mr. Trump as president-elect began raising the prospect with allies that it may not have been him on the tape after all.

Most of Mr. Trump’s aides ignored his changing story. But in January, shortly before his inauguration, Mr. Trump told a Republican senator that he wanted to investigate the recording that had him boasting about grabbing women’s genitals…

In recent months, they say, Mr. Trump has used closed-door conversations to question the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. He has also repeatedly claimed that he lost the popular vote last year because of widespread voter fraud, according to advisers and lawmakers.

One senator who listened as the president revived his doubts about Mr. Obama’s birth certificate chuckled on Tuesday as he recalled the conversation. The president, he said, has had a hard time letting go of his claim that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States. The senator asked not to be named to discuss private conversations.

Mr. Trump’s journeys into the realm of manufactured facts have been frequent enough that his own staff has sought to nudge friendly lawmakers to ask questions of Mr. Trump in meetings that will steer him toward safer terrain…

Mr. Trump’s friends did not bother denying that the president was creating an alternative version of events. One Republican lawmaker, who asked not to be identified, said that Mr. Trump’s false statements had become familiar to people over time. The president continues to boast of winning districts that he did not in fact win, the lawmaker said, and of receiving 52 percent of the women’s vote, even though exit polls show that 42 percent of women supported him…

Most of us are old enough to remember the increasingly desperate media excuse-making and evasions as it became increasingly obvious that “President” Ronald Reagan was not capable of remembering what he’d done last week, much less of running the country. Sorry, Repubs: You had your “mulligan” back in that more innocent age. Now even your own voters don’t believe Trump is just havin’ a larf on us, y’know, as only a powerful guy like him can do. Of course, a good chunk of those GOP voters don’t care that the Oval Office Occupant is (at best) sundowning or (at worst) totally disconnected from reality, but “Golly gosh we had NO IDEA” is not going to work as an excuse this time.

Reader Interactions

226Comments

  2. 2.

    different-church-lady

    @Trentrunner: So, the alternative is Conyers and Franken resign, and then Moore takes his seat?

    ETA: A little creativity from Adam renders this comment nonsensical. C’est la vie.

  3. 3.

    But her emails!!!

    @Trentrunner:

    If they compare actually electing an accused child molester to allowing due process to play out for a guy accused for grabbing a few butts, they were going to both-side it anyways.

    Dem’s can’t actually force Conyers to resign.

  5. 5.

    jay

    “to create and sell his own version of reality”

    Yeah, we used to call people like that psychopaths.

  7. 7.

    kindness

    Trump isn’t clever enough to pull this off as an act. If someone openly tells you they are crazy, you should believe them. Pence will be worse I hate to say. No not crazy worse. Dominionist Christian worse. Dumb as a post too but I don’t think Trump is much better on that front.

    We’re screwed. I need some kitten videos.

  9. 9.

    Adam L Silverman

    In addition to the Little Rocket Man digression, he also insulted our Asian-Pacific allies in a digression over charging them more money to defend them against the DPRK. This included physically mocking them. I’m sure the Japanese and the South Koreans are just thrilled. It is very hard to check Kim’s nuclear weapons ambitions if you’re regularly insulting and denigrating your allies. Allies, it is important to note, that have far, far greater military resources available to combat the DPRK than the US does right now. There are around 30,000 American military and civilian defense and foreign service personnel all told in the Republic of Korea right now. There are 452,000 ROK Soldiers in South Korea right now. And that’s just the active duty ROK Army. When you throw in the active ROK Navy, Marines, and Air Force you’re talking 625,000 personnel under arms. The ROK reserve force is another 3.1 million personnel that can be mobilized. So the idea that the ROK needs to pay us more for their own defense is absolutely ridiculous.

  10. 10.

    SenyorDave

    Just deserts if el fucking moron gets dementia and has to be put in a second rate home where he can soil himself all day long. I think it’s a 100% certainty his kids would put him away, they wouldn’t take of him. Although it would be nice to think of the arguments between Ivanka, Qusay and Uday if they did keep him at home. “Hey Ivanka, it’s your turn to clean the Donald.”

    God, I hate that POS. I never thought I could hate a politician as much as I hate Trump. He’s destroying this country.

  11. 11.

    Gin & Tonic

    The senator asked not to be named to discuss private conversations.

    The Senator asked. Why did the NYTimes agree? They could just as easily have said, sorry, we are discussing the mental incapacity of the President of the United States, so it’s on the record or nothing.

  14. 14.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    The President is on twitter windmill punching. Either he knows the tax bill is DOA or somebody’s about to get indicted.

    Just got a NYT notification that Jared spoke to Meuller’s investigators earlier this month about a post-election meeting with himself, Flynn and a Russian ambassador during the transition

  16. 16.

    Amir Khalid

    I see that Trentrunner has had a comment deleted by a frontpager. By the way, are he and Trentrunner II the same commenter? It seems a silly way to sockpuppet, if that’s what he’s doing, but …

  17. 17.

    MobiusKlein

    @Gin & Tonic: FTFNYT!
    I thought the same thing – how can the editors of the FNYTs wake up in the morning an look at the mirror knowing they continue to enable the charade. Quoting anonymous sources is great for clickbait, terrible for actual solid reporting.

  21. 21.

    Princess

    Trump is a lying, racist, narcissistic asshole. That’s what he’s always been; that’s what he is now. Sure, he’s aging and isn’t even as sharp as he once was. But he’s not demented or delusional or insane or out of control, beyond his eternal narcissistic fever-dream of his own importance.

  23. 23.

    mai naem mobile

    Lots of people knew he was a crazy old demented narcissistic POS. I am talking about you Mark Burnett and his asshole kids and illegal trophy wife and they didn’t do shit about it. I hope they all burn in hell. I cannot stand this moron.

  29. 29.

    dr. bloor

    He looks to me to be well into terminal drop, although the preexisting character pathology muddies the water some. I’d guess he’ll be dead in 3 to 5 years. If we’re lucky as a planet to outlast him, the nihilistic cabal enabling this apocalyptic farce should hang.

  30. 30.

    Dave

    @SenyorDave: I’ve come to genuinely resent every moron, patsy, and bigot that decided to make dealing with this dumpster fire of human being my and everyone elses problem.

  33. 33.

    mike in dc

    I hope he hangs in there long enough to be found competent to stand trial. He can deteriorate in the joint on his own time.

  36. 36.

    Mike J

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Just got a NYT notification that Jared spoke to Meuller’s investigators earlier this month about a post-election meeting with himself, Flynn and a Russian ambassador during the transition

    Henry Cisneros had to resign from the Clinton administration because he paid too much in child support. He had a child with his mistress and the court ordered him to pay $x/month. He was a good guy who cared about his kid, so he always paid $2x/mo. On his SF-86, when asked about how much per month he was obligated to pay, he said $x/mo. The rule for Democrats is that he should have said how much he was paying, not how much the court obligated him to pay.

    Jared lied about meeting a hostile foreign power.

  37. 37.

    Corner Stone

    @Princess: Of course he is demented. Every single person who has been around him for 5 minutes in real life recognizes he is mentally unfit for office.

  43. 43.

    matt

    Too bad it’s never going to be appropriate to comment on the madness of the conservative movement that elevated and enables him on a daily basis. They’ll dump him and ‘move on’ and we’ll have to tolerate endless press fawning over them just as if it had never happened.

  44. 44.

    Corner Stone

    @dr. bloor:

    If we’re lucky as a planet to outlast him, the nihilistic cabal enabling this apocalyptic farce should hang.

    Too quick and merciful.
    Although, tbh, right now I would take any effort that cleared them all out of there.

  45. 45.

    Adam L Silverman

    This was the President’s response to Theresa May’s response to his tweeting the Britain First knucklehead’s videos. Also, that’s not the Prime Minister of Britain’s twitter address. So he sent it to some other Theresa May.

  47. 47.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: “tell me I can’t ride in a big gold buggy, will ya?”

    I wonder if this will finally torpedo the state visit.

    and isn’t that the one he tweeted at the wrong Theresa May?

  48. 48.

    MJS

    Echoing someone else from else from a couple days ago, the “Trump’s tweeting, something bad is going to break” prediction are pretty much played out. He tweets. All.The. Time. If his shit-tweets were a precursor to bad news for him, he would have been arrested or impeached by now.

  60. 60.

    Adam L Silverman

    @raven: We don’t. We do spend about $7 billion per year total (last year I could find was for 2013) to station troops in Germany, Japan, and the ROK. We have the most military personnel of those three in Japan. That’s out of a $10 billion per year total for basing personnel overseas. So basically a rounding error.

    This isn’t counting the costs for personnel forward deployed in operational capacities in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and/or various countries in Africa. Those costs are calculated separately.

  65. 65.

    geg6

    @Millard Filmore:

    For real. NBC is in serious legal jeopardy if this is true. And we’re talking state law here. Not something Dolt 45 could possibly could pardon anyone for, even were he inclined to do so. Which he is not.

  66. 66.

    Culture of Truth

    Granted much of what he does can *seem* crazy, but don’t forget the environment he comes from. And far from being sick, it’s perfectly rational to pursue long range missiles with nuclear warheads, if only for self protection.

    Oh, we were talking about Trump

  68. 68.

    Redshift

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    That’s the second time I’ve seen AL drop one of his comments, she did it last night as well. I’ve got TR pied so I didn’t see the actual comment last night, just something about pie.

    He created a new nym this morning that was named to indicate that he did it just to evade the pie filter. I’m glad to see that’s one of the very few things that will get you banned.

  69. 69.

    hueyplong

    The utter lack of self control on camera and twitter on a daily basis kind of tells me that, whatever his sexual crimes in the past, Trump can’t function in that area anymore, because he doesn’t seem to be thinking about it, which always translates into talking about it (as he did on the Access Hollywood video).

    The misogyny remains, but the ability to act on it in a nasty manner apparently doesn’t.

    Is there general agreement on that?

    I guess this is consistent with the nature of the rumored tape(s).

    In any event, the upshot of all this is that Franken must resign.

  71. 71.

    jl

    Trump is losing it fast. Remember that he did not remember that his wife was standing next to him at a recent event. Some think it was ambiguous, but I think it was crystal clear the guy either was unaware, or his mental process is so confused he could make a slip like that an not even notice it.

  72. 72.

    mike in dc

    @matt: I am of the opinion that Obama should have pushed Holder to crack down on far right extremism a lot more. If I happen to meet the next presidential nominee at a campaign event, I will press them on this point. It’s that important.

  74. 74.

    Adam L Silverman

    This is going to lead to some choice tweets:
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-bragged-nothing-in-the-world-like-first-rate-psy

    Trump Bragged: ‘Nothing in the World Like First-Rate P**sy’
    Years before the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape, the president crassly bragged about a woman’s private parts during a golf weekend at Mar-a-Lago.

    Brandy Zadrozny
    BRANDY ZADROZNY
    11.29.17 9:00 PM ET
    In a previously unreported comment to the now-defunct Maximum Golf magazine, Donald Trump singled out a “young socialite” at his club at Mar-a-Lago by telling a reporter, “there is nothing in the world like first-rate pussy.”

    The remark never made its way to print, as a top editor of the magazine forbade the reporter from putting it in the publication. But the former journalist who wrote the article, Michael Corcoran, and another editor, both confirmed that it was said by Trump as Corcoran followed him around at his Florida golf club for a profile.

    The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

    Much more at the link.

  76. 76.

    Ian G.

    If you asked me my unscientific opinion of who was the most insane dictator the world has seen post WWII, I’d go with Francisco Macias Nguema of Equatorial Guinea. Google him.

    On that note, I wonder if I will wake up to find an executive order signed that changes the motto of the US to “there is no god but Donald J. Trump”

  77. 77.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    As a polity, we’re fucked. There will be two tiers of justice – the first, among average people, will work mostly like we’re accustomed. Divorces, average commercial disputes, most torts. This gives the veneer of fair play and a pretense of legitimacy.
    For oligarchs, justice will be bought.

    Think I’ll start looking at emigrating to China.

  82. 82.

    RedDirtGirl

    @Princess: I made myself a button that says:
    “How’s electing a pu$$y-grabbing narcissist working out so far?” I get a kick out of watching people read it on the subway.

  85. 85.

    jl

    Academic economists and business leaders are worried that if passed, the GOP tax cut will be first one to be as likely to trigger a recession as boost the economy. And unlikely if it boosts the economy, will produce much boost. Some of the provisions on corporate taxation and investment expensing depreciation are nuts. There is no ‘reform’ in it at all. More like anti-reform, putting in even more gimmicks that look like cool ways to pump more quick cash out of the system, mostly for wealthy people who own a lot but don’t do much.

    The business leaders who are doubtful are mostly in old fogey loser industries what actually ‘make real things’ and ‘provide valuable services’. These guys are no saints, probably mostly GOP, and love them some tax cuts, but they are sane. Kind of people Dems could work with to make an actual deal of some kind that might or might not be worth passing, but at least would not be insane. But those kinds of GOPers cannot be elected to office any more.

    I’ll have to go look for the articles I read on the very worried views of respectable corporate brass on the GOP tax scam.
    But, Trump thinks it will be rocket fuel.

  87. 87.

    Adam L Silverman

    @mike in dc: Epstein was on that flight with his girlfriend. From the article:

    In 2000, Corcoran was a guest on Trump’s 727 that weekend, and he wasn’t the only one. The article published in Maximum Golf magazine notes Trump had to wait at the marine terminal for now-disgraced pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and his society gal-pal Ghislaine Maxwell—who have since been accused by dozens of women of running what amounted to a “sex slave” ring. Corcoran, who didn’t know the pair at the time, remembers Trump standing in the doorway of the plane yelling to them, “You broke the cardinal rule, Jeffery! Never be late for someone else’s plane!”

    Though not mentioned in the article, Corcoran now recalls a young woman boarding with them. “I honestly couldn’t guess her age, but she was young made up to look a bit older,” he says, adding that nothing “untoward” happened during the flight.

  89. 89.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @MJS:

    Yeah, I had the same thought. Someone had opined that something big was about to fall, hence Trump’s big Fake News! tweets on Monday. No big story has dropped though.

    Instead, Moore is ahead, tax cuts look like a go, Keillor and Lauer are out (I ain’t sad about that), but Hannity and Limbaugh still remain untouched.

  90. 90.

    Another Scott

    @Princess: He’s clearly brain-damaged. IMHO.

    StatNews:

    […]

    In interviews Trump gave in the 1980s and 1990s (with Tom Brokaw, David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Rose, and others), he spoke articulately, used sophisticated vocabulary, inserted dependent clauses into his sentences without losing his train of thought, and strung together sentences into a polished paragraph, which — and this is no mean feat — would have scanned just fine in print. This was so even when reporters asked tough questions about, for instance, his divorce, his brush with bankruptcy, and why he doesn’t build housing for working-class Americans.

    Trump fluently peppered his answers with words and phrases such as “subsided,” “inclination,” “discredited,” “sparring session,” and “a certain innate intelligence.” He tossed off well-turned sentences such as, “It could have been a contentious route,” and, “These are the only casinos in the United States that are so rated.” He even offered thoughtful, articulate aphorisms: “If you get into what’s missing, you don’t appreciate what you have,” and, “Adversity is a very funny thing.”

    Now, Trump’s vocabulary is simpler. He repeats himself over and over, and lurches from one subject to an unrelated one, as in this answer during an interview with the Associated Press last month:

    “People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it — you’ve been to many of the rallies. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base, which is a big base; I think my base is 45 percent. You know, it’s funny. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College. Big, big, big advantage. … The Electoral College is very difficult for a Republican to win, and I will tell you, the people want to see it. They want to see the wall.”

    For decades, studies have found that deterioration in the fluency, complexity, and vocabulary level of spontaneous speech can indicate slipping brain function due to normal aging or neurodegenerative disease. STAT and the experts therefore considered only unscripted utterances, not planned speeches and statements, since only the former tap the neural networks that offer a window into brain function.

    The experts noted clear changes from Trump’s unscripted answers 30 years ago to those in 2017, in some cases stark enough to raise questions about his brain health. They noted, however, that the same sort of linguistic decline can also reflect stress, frustration, anger, or just plain fatigue.

    Ben Michaelis, a psychologist in New York City, performed cognitive assessments at the behest of the New York Supreme Court and criminal courts and taught the technique at a hospital and university. “There are clearly some changes in Trump as a speaker” since the 1980s, said Michaelis, who does not support Trump, including a “clear reduction in linguistic sophistication over time,” with “simpler word choices and sentence structure. … In fairness to Trump, he’s 70, so some decline in his cognitive functioning over time would be expected.”

    Some sentences, or partial sentences, would, if written, make a second-grade teacher despair. “We’ll do some questions, unless you have enough questions,” Trump told a February press conference. And last week, he told NBC’s Lester Holt, “When I did this now I said, I probably, maybe will confuse people, maybe I’ll expand that, you know, lengthen the time because it should be over with, in my opinion, should have been over with a long time ago.”

    Other sentences are missing words. Again, from the AP: “If they don’t treat fairly, I am terminating NAFTA,” and, “I don’t support or unsupport” — leaving out a “me” in the first and an “it” (or more specific noun) in the second. Other sentences simply don’t track: “From the time I took office til now, you know, it’s a very exact thing. It’s not like generalities.”

    […]

    Researchers have used neurolinguistics analysis of past presidents to detect, retrospectively, early Alzheimer’s disease. In a famous 2015 study, scientists at Arizona State University evaluated how Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush spoke at their news conferences. Reagan’s speech was riddled with indefinite nouns (something, anything), “low imageability” verbs (have, go, get), incomplete sentences, limited vocabulary, simple grammar, and fillers (well, basically, um, ah, so) — all characteristic of cognitive problems. That suggested Reagan’s brain was slipping just a few years into his 1981-1989 tenure; that decline continued. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1994. Bush showed no linguistic deterioration; he remained mentally sharp throughout his 1989-1993 tenure and beyond.

    They’re far too kind to him in their assessment, IMO. 70 isn’t that old. There are lots of people who are really sharp into their late 80s and beyond. PsychologyToday:

    – Leo Tolstoy learned to ride a bicycle at 67
    – Queen Victoria began learning Hindustani at 68
    – Giuseppe Verdi was still composing operas in his 80s
    – Somerset Maugham wrote his last book at 84
    – Frank Lloyd Wright designed his last building at 89
    – In their 90s, Robert Frost was writing poems and George Bernard Shaw was writing plays, Georgia O’Keefe was painting pictures, and Pablo Casals was playing cello
    – Oliver Wendell Holmes was still dominating the Supreme Court until he retired at 91
    – Linus Pauling was actively publishing just before his death at age 93.
    – Leopold Stokowski recorded 20 albums in his 90s and signed a six-year contract at 96

    Scientists are particularly noted for being sharp and productive long into the late 80s and 90s. The National Science Foundation reports that at age 69 more than 29% of scientists and engineers with PhDs still work full time, compared to 13% of scientists with a M.S. or B.S. degree. Marion Diamond, an active senior scientist at 75, published data showing that brain cells can grow and learning can improve throughout life.

    And so on.

    But I’m just J. Random Commenter on the Internet. ;-)

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  91. 91.

    Major Major Major Major

    @jl:

    The business leaders who are doubtful are mostly in old fogey loser industries what actually ‘make real things’ and ‘provide valuable services’. These guys are no saints, probably mostly GOP, and love them some tax cuts, but they are sane. Kind of people Dems could work with

    Maybe not considering that describes the Koch brothers.

  94. 94.

    jl

    @mike in dc:

    “Obama should have pushed Holder to crack down on far right extremism a lot more. ”

    i read that the initiative to follow potentially violent right wing extremist groups much more closely was actually started by the GW Bush administration. Obama inherited most of it. At least the study that came out was initiated by GW Bush administration. It was one of the few examples that the GW Bush administration was capable of proposing and producing good policy.

    Obama should have said that and told the GOP to go stuff it.

    Someone let me know if I misremember anything.

  97. 97.

    SFAW

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):

    Still, though: His approval dropped 34 points in just over half as many days, to 22%. His actions aren’t as grave as Conyers (much less Moore’s), but he’s at best a walkibg ghost.

    Thus, he should resign, then Gov. Mark Dayton, in a show of good faith and bipartisanship, should let Tim Pawleny name Franken’s replacement. After that, Ruth Bader Ginsburg should retire, because Argle Bargle is SURE that the Rethugs will, in a “back-atcha” show of good faith and bipartisanship, will finally vote on Merrick Garland.

    Did I forget anything?

  98. 98.

    jl

    @Major Major Major Major: ” Maybe not considering that describes the Koch brothers. ”

    Sure, but mostly it doesn’t. I read the Koch brothers and their GOP big funder buddies are angry that the GOP tax slash scam has been cut considerably from what they were promised. Koch’s might well be more obsessed with piling up more cash for themselves quickly than long run health of their businesses. And in some ways they are delusional.

    Anyway, I didn’t say a compromise would be worth passing, I just said it wouldn’t be completely insane.

  99. 99.

    SFAW

    @B.B.A.:

    Will no one rid us of this turbulent president?

    Careful.

    ETA: Just to be clear: there’s a big difference between hoping he strokes out, and what you wrote.

  103. 103.

    Adam L Silverman

    FYI!

    Brett Vanderbrook was driving for Uber last week when he got a call from an unfamiliar number. He let it go to voicemail and when he listened to it later, he got a shock: It was a recorded message telling him to stop making “negative and derogatory posts about President Trump.”

    “It was kind of threatening. I was dumbfounded at first and then creeped out,” Vanderbrook, who lives in Dallas, Texas, said in a phone interview. “Then I was angry and that’s when I decided to share it.”

    Vanderbrook makes progressive political posts on Facebook, voicing support for gun control, LGBTQ rights, and immigrant rights. None of his public posts mention President Trump or come across as “derogatory.”

    Vanderbrook is not alone, though. Across the country, and even in Canada, people have reported on social media that they’ve received the same robocall. The earliest complaint dates back to July. The intensity of the calling campaign is hard to gauge; a search of complaints turned up 10 reports scattered across different platforms.

    Update (Nov 29. 8:46 p.m.): Several readers recognized the voice in the recording from Ownage Pranks, a service that places automated prank calls. “Citizens for Trump” is a prank offered by the service, which records the call and lets the person who ordered it post it publicly if they choose. In the full recording, the caller is identified as “Russell from the Citizens for Trump Foundation.”

    Citizens for Trump describes itself as a “grassroots organization” that advocates for President Trump. According to a legal filing by its co-founder Timothy Selaty, the group was formed in 2015 by Patriotic Warriors LLC. Patriotic Warriors had now-expired business licenses in West Virginia and Arizona. The Citizens for Trump website encourages people to submit “Trump-related memes” for publication. In 2016, with the help of the ACLU, Citizens for Trump sued the city of Cleveland for the right to hold a parade there during the Republican National Convention.

    Citizens for Trump has not yet responded to questions about whether it is behind the calls or, if it is, how it is choosing whom to target.

    More at the link!

  106. 106.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Adam L Silverman: Oh god, it’s that guy.

    The script is cartoonish enough to sound like a prank. That might not be out of character for Citizens for Trump: The group is affiliated with Jack Posobiec, a Trump-supporting stunt artist and self-proclaimed investigative journalist, who listed himself in a bio as its former Special Projects Director in 2016. Posobiec is infamous for misinformation stunts; he allegedly brought a “Rape Melania” sign to a Trump protest to discredit the actual protesters, and he helped promote the bizarre conspiracy known as Pizzagate. Scholars from the Public Data Lab listed Citizens for Trump as being part of a “fake news ecosystem” during the last election.

  110. 110.

    Wapiti

    @jl: My uneducated guess is that giving rich people a lot of money will encourage them to invest it – they have to put it somewhere, right? Because the poors aren’t buying stuff, there’s no point in corporations actually making more stuff, so the investments just drive up the price of shares. I expect we’ll see a stock bubble and crash.

  114. 114.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    @SFAW: Isn’t there a lawn you should be taking care of? “Franken is increasingly becoming a liability” and “we should unconditionally surrender to the Republicans” are two different things – I would actually argue that a Moore seating strengthens the case for Franken staying on as a lame duck, for one thing.

  115. 115.

    Adam L Silverman

    He’s going to be completely manic sometime around 6 AM tomorrow!

  116. 116.

    But her emails!!!

    @Wapiti:

    Because we’ll be borrowing to finance the tax cuts, the only relatively assured thing is we’re going to see a greater investment in US Treasuries.How that shakes out in the other assets is going to be tough to tell.

  117. 117.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Adam L Silverman: And this too!

    Refers to this insanity:

    Which appears to refer to this stupidity by Congressman Nunes:

  124. 124.

    Ruckus

    @Princess:
    This is not just the asshole personality that he has been his entire asshole life. I’ve been saying for a while that he is in at least the early stages of dementia. I’ve seen this up close and personal with 3 relatives. This is what it looks like. Not everyone is the same or progresses at the same speed but overall………

  126. 126.

    Another Scott

    @Matt McIrvin: IIRC, he mentioned the possibility of bailing on us to run to that mysterious land a year or so ago, also too. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but …

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  130. 130.

    debbie

    So the local Fox station shows the lottery numbers every night during the 10 pm news, with some stupid instrumental music in the background. Tonight they played that song with the lyrics about I’m in love in your body and my bedsheets smell like you. I can’t imagine that wasn’t a mistake!

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JGwWNGJdvx8

  132. 132.

    jl

    @Wapiti: Most of the recent increase in corporate valuation is due to hopes of cost-cutting and more monopoly power from mergers and acquisitions, and corporate stock buy backs. So, we’re already pretty far down that road. Some of the corporate tax provisions in the GOP bill do a lot get quick cash from lower taxes, but are so crazy and senseless that they may well reduce real productive investment.

    And there is also the fact that if the mechanism of how the corporate tax rate cuts works as intended to spur economic growth, it will cause a big increase in the trade deficit, and will suck more national income out of US into foreign owners buying up US assets.

  134. 134.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MJS: Brad Moss. One of the partners at Mark Zaid’s law firm They specializing in fixing issues with security clearances, protecting real whistleblowers, and FOIA requests on behalf of reporters and good government watchdog groups. In fact they’re doing the FOIA stuff pro bono right now to serve as a check on the President and his appointees. They quickly filed an amendment to one of their suits over a FOIA request about an hour ago. Here are the details.

  138. 138.

    Jack the Second

    I have a hard time feeling bad for Trump, but does it seem … cruel, to take a man like Trump – aging, confused, insecure – and make him President? It’s like taking a Make-a-Wish kid and then making them actually BE a doctor or fireman or police officer, and then acting like it’s their fault when people start dying.

  139. 139.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Physically safer there than here, and I’m actually feeling better about a throttled internet devoted to running a hookup site than I am about ours.

  141. 141.

    Quaker in a Basement

    The president continues to boast of winning districts that he did not in fact win, the lawmaker said, and of receiving 52 percent of the women’s vote, even though exit polls show that 42 percent of women supported him…

    He means white women.

  142. 142.

    MJS

    @Adam L Silverman: Thanks to you and lurker dean for the info. But is it really advisable to spike the football via tweet, even when your adversary is someone as odious as Trump? Maybe just a, “Thank you for your help” tweet? Or better yet, nothing, lest someone get it through Trumps thick skull that his tweets do him great harm?

  143. 143.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I don’t know, Adam… like Fox Mulder, I want to believe (that Trump will crash and burn), but some new and juicy bit comes out, Rachel and company go nuts for a couple days, and Trump continues to dismantle the country.

    Any guess as to when this all stops being so much water cooler gossip and fun From Russia with Love vids and becomes SERIOUS?

  144. 144.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Another Scott: I remember reading some of his late papers on quasicrystals–he thought that they didn’t exist, that people were being fooled by the well-known phenomenon of crystal twinning, which can produce forms that superficially seem to have the kinds of “forbidden” symmetry found in quasicrystals. It was a reasonable hypothesis early on, but he kept having to make his scheme more and more complicated to respond to objections, and after a while it seemed like sheer stubbornness.

  146. 146.

    SFAW

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):

    It was a fucking joke. Although it was in a reply to you, it was more aimed at TRunner, our resident “ZOMG Franken ZOMFG!” troll, and at Argle Bargle, whose nom/nym (it is my belief) is a reference to the idiotic “RBG should do the stand-up thing and resign/retire so that Obama can name a liberal to the SCOTUS, because she won’t live forever” bullshit that was the go-to argument for one of the trolls here in 2015 or early 2016 (pre-Garland). I am of the belief that Argle Bargle and that earlier troll are the same person.

    My sincere apologies for not being clear about that. I guess it might be considered abstruse by people who can’t read my “mind.”

  150. 150.

    Another Scott

    @Matt McIrvin: I’ll forgive him things like that. Lots and lots of people get stubborn and end up being wrong. He was so prolific in so many areas that he deserves the chance to be wrong, too.

    I heard today (for the first time) that there are people claiming that there are such things as time crystals:

    Using the analogy of crystals in space, the breaking of translational symmetry in time and the emergence of a ‘time crystal’ was recently proposed2,3, but was later shown to be forbidden in thermal equilibrium4,5,6. However, non-equilibrium Floquet systems, which are subject to a periodic drive, can exhibit persistent time correlations at an emergent subharmonic frequency7,8,9,10. This new phase of matter has been dubbed a ‘discrete time crystal’10. Here we present the experimental observation of a discrete time crystal, in an interacting spin chain of trapped atomic ions.

    I wonder what Linus would have thought of such things! :-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  151. 151.

    JWR

    @Adam L Silverman:

    …he also insulted our Asian-Pacific allies in a digression over charging them more money to defend them against the DPRK. This included physically mocking them.

    I guess we should be happy he didn’t push up the corners of his eyes and say “ah so, ah so.”

  153. 153.

    frosty

    @Adam L Silverman: True. Young Frankenstein is full of great lines and scenes. I read that Gene Wilder insisted Brooks play it straight without breaking the fourth wall and it really made the movie. Plus, the guy who had squirrelled away the original lab props was happy to let Brooks use them.

    Plus again, Terri Garr!!!

  155. 155.

    Bill Arnold

    @Another Scott:
    Another link (dredged from a comment in 2017/02):
    Using Discourse Analysis to Assess Cognitive Decline
    Includes links to Trump interviews with Letterman. (Links have apparently been updated.)
    Not a medical person, but I’ve been tracking DT’s cognitive abilities since mid Jan 2017, and there has been a noticeable decline IMO. His mental style was always intuitive and … stochastic. It’s not working so well now; guessing older brain, lousy diet, no exercise, fatigue due to the “hard work”. Perhaps it’s progressive (or not), but he should probably quit for his own good, and try to heal, and I say this as somebody who loathes him, especially for pushing emotional buttons to encourage me and others loath him.

    And yeah. Knew a physicist who posthumously had a paper published in his late 80s.

  156. 156.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: Gonna be hard to top that in terms of national security bad guy actions. I’m not sure anyone is going to be able to best that in the four weeks left in 2017.

  157. 157.

    Amir Khalid

    @Wapiti:
    Not necessarily. They won’t bother to invest if they don’t see a compelling opportunity. They don’t even need it to live on like those of lesser means, so they can just put the money in a vault instead, and go swimming in it like Scrooge McDuck.

  159. 159.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    This is as open as I remember them being about their plans shred the social safety net

    John Harwood‏Verified account @ JohnJHarwood
    Lamar Alexander told me that tax cuts followed by deficit-reducing spending cut is “winning formula” for GOP

    Igor Bobic @ igorbobic
    Graham says some senators want trigger to cut discretionary spending (hello, sequester Pt. 2!) rather than a rollback in tax rates

    Glenn Kessler‏Verified account @ GlennKesslerWP
    Hmmm, Marco Rubio says that the tax plan is just the first step before “instituting structural changes to Social Security and Medicare” benefits to reduce the federal deficit

  162. 162.

    Steve in the ATL

    @MJS:

    But is it really advisable to spike the football via tweet, even when your adversary is someone as odious as Trump? Maybe just a, “Thank you for your help” tweet? Or better yet, nothing, lest someone get it through Trumps thick skull that his tweets do him great harm?

    Dude, trump never learns anything; he always doubles down. This is likely a great strategy.

  163. 163.

    frosty

    @Another Scott: And then again, my dad, a PhD engineer, developed Parkinson’s around 65, the year he retired, started getting cognitively impaired around 10 years later, and passed away at 80. It’s all a crap shoot.

  165. 165.

    SFAW

    @M. Bouffant:

    TIME CUBE!

    Reading that, all I could think of was either Professor Irwin Corey (may he RIP), “Who’s on First?”, or the contract scene from “A Night at the Opera.” Or perhaps a combination of all three of them.

  166. 166.

    Amir Khalid

    @SFAW:
    As it happens, the original Deutsch — Neunundneunzig Luftballons — doesn’t even mention the colour of the balloons.

  170. 170.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I’ve gone. I felt less excluded and scruTinized in rural China than I felt in Eastern Kentucky 150 miles from home (and in the same congressional district). I’m just tired of the same repeated fight.

    Will likely feel the same about Vietnam next month.

  172. 172.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @jl:

    Most of the recent increase in corporate valuation is due to hopes of cost-cutting and more monopoly power from mergers and acquisitions, and corporate stock buy backs.

    You talk of this as if it’s a bad thing, why do you hate the Free Market* jl?

    *Free Market is a registered Trademark of the Republican National Committee.

  175. 175.

    sukabi

    @Adam L Silverman: I fully expect industrial strength shredders are on their way to all of drumpfs properties right now…gonna make the shredding done by Enron and Arthur Anderson look like child’s play.

  178. 178.

    Another Scott

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Later on, he argued that massive doses of Vitamin C prevents cancer.

    When he was asked why he himself developed cancer if what he was saying was true, he said that he didn’t take enough Vitamin C when he was younger… :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  180. 180.

    At sunset the tiercel flew above the marsh, pursuing a wisp of snipe. They drummed away down wind, like stone skidding across ice.

    I watched the Japanese news network NHK today as the polite anchor attempted to convey the content of Trump’s remarks without revealing that she believed he was an insane person.

  181. 181.

    B.B.A.

    @Omnes Omnibus: I was born here, and I was raised here, and dad gum it, I am gonna die here, and no sidewindin’ bushwackin’, hornswagglin’ cracker croaker is gonna rouin me bishen cutter.

  186. 186.

    danielx

    @Princess:

    But he’s not demented or delusional or insane or out of control, beyond his eternal narcissistic fever-dream of his own importance.

    I disagree, but in practical terms: if his narcissistic fever dreams produce the same effects as senile dementia (to name one distinct possibility) is there any real difference?

  190. 190.

    Raoul

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Will we ever wake up from Paul Ryan’s wet dream/national nightmare?

    Really, tho, once the olds figure out that the GOP is gunning for their Medicare, can the GOP hang on? I know the cynics here (all of us, Katie!) think the Dems will get the blame, but I’m not so sure. Even old and addled folks more or less know the GOP won in 2016.

  191. 191.

    SFAW

    @B.B.A.:

    I was born here, and I was raised here, and dad gum it, I am gonna die here, and no sidewindin’ bushwackin’, hornswagglin’ cracker croaker is gonna rouin me bishen cutter.

    Now WHO can argue with that?

  194. 194.

    r€nato

    That last tweet, OMG yes. I am so fucking sick and tired of hearing how Trump’s latest insane rant is a “distraction from X”.

    He is not capable of that kind of strategic thinking, or of ANY strategic thinking. He is as impulsive as a toddler. Stop overthinking this.

  195. 195.

    danielx

    Once upon a time I watched a bad Steven Seagal movie (are there any other kind?) and there was one worthwhile scene in the whole movie. Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones were the villains, and at some point Busey, who was wearing a wig and looking even more deranged than usual, snarls at Jones: “do I look like I need psychological help?”. It may have been ad-libbed, since Jones looked like he was working hard at not breaking up.

    Gary Busey playing Trump in a movie can’t be far off; they even resemble each other to a degree.

  196. 196.

    SFAW

    @Another Scott:

    I wonder how far our national officials would let him decline before finally stepping in.

    It all depends on whether he keeps signing the “Fuck the middle/lower class” bills they send him, or if he starts promulgating liberal policies.

    Since neither is likely, I’m guessing the answer is “never.”

  198. 198.

    danielx

    Found it….actually it was like this:

    Gary Busey: do i look like i need a psychological evaluation?

    Tommy Lee Jones: not at all.

    And Busey was in drag.

  200. 200.

    Bess

    @Ken:

    .

    I wonder what it’s like to be one of Trump’s lawyers. They must be at the “whatever, as long as the checks clear” stage.

    I assume they’ve padded previous statements enough so that when his checks do start bouncing they will have already collected for those hours.

    OTOH, they are Trump’s attorneys. Perhaps they weren’t smart enough to think about that….

  201. 201.

    SFAW

    @Raoul:

    I know the cynics here (all of us, Katie!) think the Dems will get the blame, but I’m not so sure.

    I think that’s because there’s no real scream machine to shout-from-the-rooftops that the RWNJs are fucking over everyone in the 95 percent. Whereas the RWNJs have Fox. And the RWNJs have been working the refs (i.e., the MSM) for 40 years, so much so that they (with few exceptions) are scared to report things which make the Rethugs look as evil/bad as they really are.

  205. 205.

    danielx

    @Amir Khalid:

    Then clearly he’s the perfect candidate, particularly if he were to play Trump. Broken logic, off-the-cuff instant rages…what’s not to like?

  206. 206.

    danielx

    @Raoul:

    Even old and addled folks more or less know the GOP won in 2016.

    True, and I’ve been reminded of it by some of my contemporaries more than once. I didn’t like hearing “get over it” – repeatedly – after Bush stole the 2000 election, and I like it even less now – a whole lot less, and no, I’m not going to get over it. I detested W and still do, but I wasn’t concerned about his mental stability to any great degree. His stupidity and maliciousness were and are a whole ‘nother set of issues, but I didn’t think he was deranged. We can survive presidents who are less than brilliant, but I’m not at all convinced Trump won’t blow the planet off its axis before 2020. Even if he doesn’t, I am beginning to doubt whether he would leave office voluntarily under any circumstances.

  207. 207.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Villago Delenda Est: IIRC, in the video the balloons were a variety of colors, which was confusing to young MTV viewers who didn’t know that “red” was added simply because the song required a syllable to replace “luft” when translated from German into English.

  208. 208.

    frosty

    @danielx:

    Once upon a time I watched a bad Steven Seagal movie (are there any other kind?)

    Yes, Executive Decision, where he gets killed early and Kurt Russel has to take over leading the op.

  213. 213.

    Felonius Monk

    Don’t know if this has been mentioned yet:

    Gil Hoffman
    @Gil_Hoffman
    Israeli officials expect @realDonaldTrump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announce that the US embassy will move there as early as Sunday, due to pressure from his Evangelical Christian supporters, according to scoop by @danawt
    1:10 PM – Nov 29, 2017
    97 97 Replies 466 466 Retweets 479 479 likes

  218. 218.

    TenguPhule

    @frosty: Also the one movie Condi Rice never bothered to watch when trying to explain why nobody saw 9/11 coming.

    It wasn’t fucking rocket science when a Seagal film figures it out before you do.

  219. 219.

    J R in WV

    @SFAW:

    the RWNJs have been working the refs (i.e., the MSM) for 40 years, so much so that they (with few exceptions) are scared to report things which make the Rethugs look as evil/bad as they really are.

    And you don’t think that the olds won’t notice when their Social Security deposits stop arriving in their bank accounts? ‘Cause I think everyone on Social Security will notice right after their birth date day of the month, which is when those payments are scheduled. Most folks need to know when and how much we be deposited, to the penny!!

    Maybe they will blame the Ds, that would be super Stupid! but we are talking about people who voted for The Donald.

  220. 220.

    THE fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.

    How’s this?

  221. 221.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ian G.: I have to admit, having your opponents mass-executed in a sports stadium by guys dressed as Santa Claus while light pop hits play on the PA system is really going above and beyond.

  222. 222.

    artem1s

    There are all these insider anecdotes about the president that read like they’re from a Last Days Of Tyrant Who Lost His Mind kind of book.

    The Last King of Mar-A-Lago
    The Madness of Dolt45

  223. 223.

    low-tech cyclist

    He seriously isn’t getting enough oxygen to his brain.

    I disagree. He’s getting 100% too much.

  224. 224.

    TriassicSands

    NYT says Trump will fire Tillerson within “weeks” and replace him with Pompeo.

    Poor Rex.

  225. 225.

    SFAW

    @TenguPhule:

    It wasn’t fucking rocket science when a Seagal film figures it out before you do.

    Actually, there was some Tom Clancy novel where a pilot — who apparently was having a bad (h)air day — flew his 747 into the Capitol. Came out before 9/11.

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