In response to a book containing allegations that he’s childish and vindictive, Trump tweeted this:
Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book. He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad! https://t.co/mEeUhk5ZV9
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018
In response to a national conversation about his intelligence, sanity and stability, Trump tweeted this:
….Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018
….to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018
Enjoy your weekend!
SiubhanDuinne
“Stable genius” = Someone who knows a lot about horseshit.
bystander
“Stable genius” may mean he knows best how to shovel horsesh*t.
Roger Moore
Shorter Donald Trump: I know you are, but what am I?
PaulWartenberg
know how many smart people – geniuses – suffer from Imposter Syndrome to where they RARELY brag about how genius they are?
Granted, you get a few egomaniacs who love to boast their genius status. but they are NEVER truly stable on an emotional level.
trump’s delusions would be laughable except this is all too dangerous.
geg6
It was not his first time. Another easily verifiable lie. Unless his long term memory is going. Which could certainly be true.
satby
I think the demand that the Republicans do something about Trump will continue to build. They can and will try to ride out this storm, but they won’t be able to.
eschneider
@bystander: There is a right way and a wrong way to shovel horsesh*t. It’s more complicated than it looks.
geg6
@satby:
I agree. Even the media are saying it out loud now.
KickBoxBanana
That’s too stupid and childish even for him. I think he just does it for kicks now. Then again, the bar is so low already it’s hard to go much lower.
lowtechcyclist
4525 should be his new designation.Every mention of him should include that built-in reminder that his Cabinet has this urgent business to attend to.
clay
It goes without saying, but he’s lying of course. This wasn’t the first time he ran for president.
john fremont
@SiubhanDuinne: With all this horseshit laying around, there’s gotta be horse in here somewhere!
bystander
@eschneider: Who knew horsesh*t shoveling was so complicated? As a stable genius, I’m sure he has now mastered every nuance.
Tokyokie
Hmmm, one would have guessed that Fred’s real estate portfolio would have figured into der Trumpenführer’s greatest assets. But you know that somebody must be Wile E. Coyote Super Genius-level brilliant if he makes his argument by writing he is “being, like, really smart.” I seriously doubt that T.S. Eliot could have caressed the English language to make such an argument more compellingly and more succinctly.
randy khan
@Tokyokie:
LOL. This made me think of an appropriate Eliot response to Trump:
JohnO
@satby: I’m almost 60 and have been paying attention to national politics a LONG time and I don’t think the modern Republican party has the moral backbone to do it this time.
I see nothing but chaos ahead. Trump is simply going to fire and pardon everyone he feels like; I don’t believe a SINGLE person inside the Trump Crime Syndicate will ever see a minute of even soft time, and things are going to get awfully dicey when The People realize there is no Constitutional remedy for what’s happening.
We live in a fact-free world now. Mueller can bring video of DT on his knees under Vlad’s table while the KGB laughs at him to the Times and Post and DT taking cartoon bags of money off a Russian freighter at the port in NYC, and his base and most conservatives will cry fake news and if they have enough luck (RBG dying, for example) the courts could be packed sufficiently for reality to matter no longer. We’ll see.
Very strange and unsettling times.
jimmiraybob
President Obama made it on his first try. And his second.
AM in NC
Yesterday and today I called both my Republican Senators and left messages for them asking why they and GOP leadership aren’t doing something about our obviously dangerous President. Make them responsible for him.
donnah
I downloaded Wolff’s book. I’m only three chapters into it, but it’s scary as fuck and even if it’s not all true, there are nuggest of truth that make me want to fill my basement with provisions and bolt the door.
It will be interesting to see how the information Wolff shares is processed by the Republicans. If Wolff can indeed back everything up with tapes and notes, there will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. It’s a quick read and I intend to finish it. I will take it under advisement that some of it can just be Wolff’s conjecture, but if even part of it is true, it’s an indictment of the Republican Party on a grand scale.
clay
Why would he (or whoever types his dictates) put in the “…, like, …” before the “really smart”? It’s one thing as a verbal tic, but typed out it produces the opposite of the intended meaning.
Maybe his tweet-typed is a sick of this bullshit as the rest of us?
japa21
Does Trump even recognize that the very fact that he felt the need to do those last two tweets and that he went ahead and tweeted them actually undermines his whole argument? Why am I even asking that?
JGabriel
Donald Trump:
Whereas most Americans view it as the greatest example — the absolute quintessential paradigm par excellence — of failing upward. And proof that all you need to be successful in America is to start out with a few hundred millions of inherited dollars.
Honus
@eschneider: as somebody who has actually shoveled a fair amount of horse manure, I can verify that. Spreading sand or gravel with a shovel is also a bit of an art.
Suffragette City
I too am helping Wolff become a very rich man. Had to, too damn funny and frightening not to.
Has the calendar come out yet? I clicked on the store but it’s not showing.
Elizabelle
I truly think the “Trump is unfit” is hitting the fan because the GOP thieves already rammed their tax cut for the rich down our throats. Without a single Democratic vote.
Trump is expendable now.
Quinerly
@jimmiraybob: So did Bill Clinton.
tobie
@JohnO: Rachel Maddow made the same point last night. Whatever semblance of autonomy the Republicans exercised (or seemed to exercise) at the beginning of Trump’s term has now evaporated. ALL Republicans in the Senate and the House are engaged in an out-and-out effort to discredit the FBI, the DOJ, the Mueller probe, and the perennial favorite, the Clintons. Shit, the FBI under party hack Wray even turned over two of its agent to the House wolves. To echo Kay from this morning’s open thread, the time is coming when we will need to take to the streets.
ETA: Anyone have a read on Rosenstein? Can’t tell if he is an honorable public servant or a hack like Wray.
Tokyokie
I will give Il Douche credit for this: I never thought I’d ever feel sympathy for Steve Bannon. However, with a little sleep, I’ll get it over it, whereas der Scheißgibbon will be thoroughly contemptible forever.
kd bart
The only person who buys this crap is Cillizza.
Tokyokie
@randy khan: In my experience, nobody who feels compelled to insist on stating just how smart he is, is such.
mai naem mobile
I’ll have to wait for Colbert to read that out in his Dolt45 voice on Monday.
jimmiraybob
@Quinerly: It might be easier to figure out who didn’t make president on their first try. Thomas Jefferson didn’t make it on the first try but did on the 2nd and 3rd.
BC in Illinois
@jimmiraybob:
@Quinerly:
So did Jimmy Carter.
And JFK.
You know, people who were, like, really smart.
And Presidents we can be proud of.
In my lifetime, Truman was already President when he ran the first time, and I think LBJ ran in 1960 and has (ahem) a mixed record, including a lot that was good. But overall the point is that running for the first time is not the point; the point of it all is being a good president. Which Trump is not.
And as Sarah Kendzior points out:
chris
Deleted because great minds, etc.
Damn, BC!
Adam L Silverman
@Tokyokie:
Gelfling 545
@JohnO: This mirrors a discussion we had at a family dinner on NYE. The younger folks had faith it would be handled, us older people, not so much. Being old enough to have witnessed the complete dissolution of the Republican party along with the fact that they have been rewarded for it with immense power gives one little to hope for from them.
Gravenstone
Yo, “genius” – actual intelligent people don’t typically go shouting it to the rooftops. Insecure imbeciles, on the other hand …
Bobby Thomson
The 25th amendment does not work. You will never get 2/3 of the House to vote for removal. Never.
mike in dc
Very Stable Genius, or VSG, is my new appellation for him. As in, Very Stable Genius can build a working fusion reactor on his first try.
CarolDuhart2
@JohnO: I think everyone up to Pence and Trump will see time. There’s a real reason they are trying to attack the DC/NYC jury pool and its diversity. The people in it have faced and worked for scumbags like Manafort, have seen the bigotry of Trumpland, and hate all parts of it. Add the general ineptitude of Trumpland legal counsel, and just about everybody who hasn’t made a deal will do time.
This part doesn’t have anything to do with Congress or the Republican Party. If Mueller can make a solid case, they are done and will go to Club Fed.
Defendant can hope for pardons, but Trump is deteriorating at record speed to the point where I think in a few weeks he will need assistance even getting dressed in the morning. He already can’t read, how soon it will be before he forgets who he is as a person, let alone that he’s President. Motor skills, anybody? Able to even know what a pardon is?
Ever since he was sworn in, I’ve expected that one day they will find him curled up in a ball under the Resolute Desk, unable to speak or understand what they are saying to him.
BC in Illinois
@chris:
And very stable great minds, at that.
dmsilev
President Fredo Corleone.
Gelfling 545
@Suffragette City: I ordered from Barnes &Noble early yesterday – hardcover because I want to be able to pass it around to others. Ordered online because my usual connection at the store said forget it – sold put before it came in! At time pf order expected shipping date was 1/10. By the time It was processed we were already to 1/19. Mr Wolff is going to be a very wealthy individual.
Bobby Thomson
@Tokyokie:
marv
Really bothered me I couldn’t quite place the “voice” I heard under the Michael Wolff tweet. Then it hit me – reminds me of Andy Kaufman’s Archie Bunker imitation
clay
@dmsilev: Actually, he combines the worst qualities of Fredo and Sonny. (Stupidity and impulsive vindictiveness, respectively.)
Gravenstone
@clay: He’s used that exact formulation “like, really smart” to describe himself in the past. So that’s genuine Trump gibberish being Tweeted about.
m.j.
I’m probably wrong here, but looking at the 25th Amendment it seems to me that someone could hand Donny a piece of paper and ask him to sign it, saying plaintively, “Please, Mr. President, if you do this you’ll still be President, you can play all the golf you want, and your Vice President will take care of everything else…really!”
I understand the Republican intelligentsia are meeting at Camp David this weekend.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Damn dumb ass Donny really doesn’t get it
Because Bannon was the only in your administration who gave a shit of doing his job, you ignorant twat. Of course Bannon was heart broken.
Damn, now I have sympthy for Bannon, strange times.
jimmiraybob
Someone should Google up the old Budweiser “Real men of Genius” advertisements. There’s one about toupees that is as good as Prophecy gets.
clay
@Gravenstone: Yeah, I’ve heard him use that as a verbal tic. But why the fuck would you type it?!?!!?
I swear, this disturbs me more than everything else in the tweet.
Gravenstone
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Considering that Bannon felt that his “job” was to break everything, I don’t believe sympathy is in order.
Suzanne
@dmsilev:
Ralph Lauren of Arabia isn’t president yet!
I am desperately hoping that my copies will come today. I say “copies” because I ordered one for myself and anyone else in the household/friend circle who wants to read it…..but then SuzMom said she couldn’t bear to wait until I was done. So fingers crossed.
Elie
@Gelfling 545:
We will have to fight for the country. That has already begun but will get more intense and spread across multiple fronts. We cannot accept the wholesale theft of our government by the corrupt abetted by foreign interests
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: You’re really going to take Trump’s tweet seriously as an honest recounting of events?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Gravenstone: Yes, that’s what the bizarre part of it all is.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Politics is all about the narrative the politician creates. Trump created one of total nihilism around him. That’s why Wolff was able to wander around the West Wing and get everyone to bitch about everything on record, nothing matters in Trump world. Now, days after Trump has it thrown in Trump’s face about having his own staff not giving a shit can hurt Trump personally, what does Trump do; mock the people who did care as losers.
Mr Stagger Lee
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Bannon called for a tax of 44% on the Billionaires and Millionaires, and that got him tossed out of the Mercer family cookie jar. That was his real crime. As for Trump Don IL Wylie Coyote Super Genius
Brachiator
@m.j.:
They are meeting with Trump to map out the next stage of their legislative agenda.
GOP leadership ignores all the furor and pretends that everything is fine. Right now, they are all in for Trump, no matter what.
Aleta
@dmsilev: It’s not personal Fredo. It’s strictly business. (Munchin dumping DJ out of the boat)
Aleta
@mike in dc: VSG invented how to build walls out of hot air.
hellslittlestangel
… and being, like, really smart.
What gets me is the “like.” People talk like that, but who writes like that? Is he transcribing his own rambling, or, since it’s properly punctuated, is someone transcribing it for him?
Marcia
We all know you’ve got a permanent woody for Hillary, Donnie. Just admit it already and be done with it.