Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

If you’re looking for someone who’s young and athletic, go watch a fucking movie.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

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You Told A Lie

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You Told A Lie

A couple of Trumpworld items:

First, though it was eclipsed by the Supreme Court ruling this morning, Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s wartime CFO, pled guilty to perjury this morning and got a five-month sentence.  I assume his lips had to be surgically removed from Trump’s anus before he could plead, because you gotta be a brown-noser supreme to go to jail over something this stupid:

But a key moment of his testimony came when Weisselberg insisted he did not notice a discrepancy on Trump’s financial statements: that Trump’s triplex apartment was listed as being 30,000 sq ft when in reality, it is closer to 11,000 sq ft.

“It was de minimus, in my mind,” he said at the time.

Forbes magazine disputed the claim he made on the stand, saying it had emails and notes that proved Weisselberg had actively tried to convince the magazine for years that the triplex was bigger than it actually was, denying what was listed on real-estate documents. Weisselberg abruptly ended his testimony after Forbes published an article accusing him of lying on the stand.

Of all the things to go to jail for lying about.

Second, there’s a lot of talk about Trump’s slide into dementia.  I want to believe, but does anyone have a link to a clear example of him short-circuiting for more than a couple of seconds?  For example, Jeff Tiedrich posted this six second clip, where Trump definitely loses it at the end.  But did he recover?  I don’t know because the clip was chopped.  I definitely think one of the keys to winning the election is more video evidence that Trump is losing it.  An interview with a psychiatrist who says Trump’s “phonemic paraphasias” is a sign of his worsening dementia is find for nerds and eggheads like the readers of this blog, but what might move the needle with the casual voter is a greatest hits reel of Trump’s brain turning into cheerios.  Does anyone have that?

Reader Interactions

157Comments

  1. 1.

    Sanjeevs

    what might move the needle with the casual voter is a greatest hits reel of Trump’s brain turning into cheerios.

    The same casual voter that has ignored the rapes, the insurrection, the frauds, the treason…..

  4. 4.

    zhena gogolia

    @Sanjeevs: Well, yeah, but so much of his appeal is based on some kind of TV charisma. Maybe this will damage that.

    At the least, it should have some effect on those Democrats who are worried about Biden’s age that the NYT keeps writing about.

  5. 5.

    Betty Cracker

    ABC News says Weisselberg won’t have to testify at the upcoming hush money trial. What did the prosecutor get in the plea deal?

  6. 6.

    Jeffro

    Not really fair to Cheerios there, MM

    I was thinking more like malt-o-meal…do they still make that?

    Anyway, I second this motion (and it looks like Biden/Harris 2024 does, too): keep showing America clip after clip of Mr. Cognitive Test in all his nonsense-spewing glory.  It’s not like he’s going to get BETTER over the next eight months.

  8. 8.

    Jeffro

    @zhena gogolia: I hear you, but…they did have a piece up about ‘Joe Biden super fans” today (might have already been discussed here).

    I think it’s funny that they have to call them “super fans”, though.  The folks described in the article are like, “duh, it’s just common sense?”, not holding crazy-ass rallies or driving around with Joe Biden flags flying from the back of their pick-up trucks.

  12. 12.

    Jeffro

    @Matt McIrvin: actual quote:

    ”Ms. Russell and Ms. Stalker are ardent, unreserved supporters of Mr. Biden – part of a small but dedicated group of Democratic voters who think that he is not merely the party’s only option against Donald J. Trump but, in fact, a great, transformative president who clearly deserves another four years in office.”

    translation: they already think we’re nutty

  14. 14.

    Scout211

    Here’s a montage video of Trump’s gaffes over the weekend on Ron Filipkowski’s Twitter/X.  It’s almost 3 minutes and switches quickly.  But even those that are shown seem more like a heavily medicated, drowsy Trump having a hard time reading the teleprompter and then slurring his words.

  15. 15.

    West of the Rockies

    Well, five months in prison for 76-year-old Weaselberg isn’t wretched.  I mean, maybe he’ll be around in 20 years, but he could also be down to a year or two.

  17. 17.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Why does the Christian devil look like the Greek god Pan?

    I’m sure it will be one of those rejecting paganism things, but I really hope someone here knows the answer definitively.

    What color is Pan/devil

    Pan is brown.  His skin is in the darker middle-eastern range.  His fur is slightly darker than that.  The Greeks had a whole thing about skin color and what it meant and how this was relevant to various ethnic groups.  Dark skin was manly, up until a certain point where you became wild and no longer intellectual.

    The Devil is any color.  Shit, Christians haven’t been able to agree on anything occult for five minutes in two thousand years.

  19. 19.

    Jeffro

    @schrodingers_cat: I think we oughta keep pointing out just how twisted and weird both trump and his followers are.

    I don’t know why decent people would be anywhere near those scum.  I guess that’s why they keep their heads in the sand and pretend that “they’re voting for the policies” or that they’re supporting “the Republican candidate”.  Nope.  You’re enabling a cult and you own every last bit of it, Mr. Ostrich Republican .

  20. 20.

    $8 blue check mistermix

    @Betty Cracker:  I’m guessing that if he really cooperated, he’d have been spared prison time.  So I’m guessing he won’t be testifying for the prosecution against Trump in any other case…

  21. 21.

    Anoniminous

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Pan was the god of wilderness, nature, fertility, shepherds, flocks, of mountain wilds, and sex.  Thus has been conjectured Christians said Pan was the tempter when Jesus went into the wilderness.

    I doubt anyone knows for sure, though.

  22. 22.

    Doc Sardonic

    @schrodingers_cat: Possibly due to the plagiarizing that went on back then among the religions. Christianity heavily copied from the pagan religions for things that were recognizable to the converted. Pan’s coloring, since he was part goat, would probably be in a range of tans, browns, or with some greens since he was usually found in pastoral settings.

  26. 26.

    Sure Lurkalot

    He has a very bad brain in so many ways so who knows.  But I mentioned in a thread downstairs that it seems telling that he uses words or parts of words that sound like the words he means to use (or what’s on the teleprompter).

    I think it’s also telling that he’s gone on record to say that his malapprops substituting Haley for Pelosi and Obama for Biden is purposeful and done for “comedic” value. When you’re explaning, your losing (i.e. actually sundowning), right? Besides, when he calls Nikki “bird brain” and Gavin Newsome “new scum” and his sycophantic followers laugh, it’s still not “comedy”.

  27. 27.

    $8 blue check mistermix

    @Scout211:  Thanks –  It’s a start, but too many quick cuts and not enough “grandpa’s losing it”…

  31. 31.

    LesGS

    @schrodingers_cat: There are a number of reasons. One was to frighten the folk who might have traditionally honored Pan away from him by smearing him with the idea he represents evil. He also represents a sort of wild sexuality which Christians consider sinful.

    I would do Pan in natural colors; dark for his shaggy goat legs and beard and hair, dark tan for his human skin. The devil could be whatever, though red and black are often associated with him. Although the devil has many iconographical forms, not just the Pan-like one.

  32. 32.

    Ruckus

    @Jeffro:

    No, he is not going to get any better. What he’s showing sounds to this not-doctor like Alzheimers, which I have had to deal with in one parent about SFB’s age. Said parent lived in a facility for folks with Alzheimers for a short while till he had to be placed in an even more controlled setting and then his last couple weeks were in a very closely watched hospital setting.

  35. 35.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Just tell people “Trump has severe dementia” and show them that 6 second clip.  You’re overthinking it.

  40. 40.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Trump has done the ‘running against Obama’ thing several times now, hasn’t he?  That’s important.  People can misspeak any damn thing.  When you do it more than once, it stops being a verbal fumble and becomes actual confusion.

  41. 41.

    Lyrebird

    @Frankensteinbeck: one of those rejecting paganism things

    Not at the beginning at least.

    @schrodingers_cat: From my rough recollection, the teachings of Jesus came at a time when Judaism was going through a big conflict about whether to stay mostly monistic* or to go more towards Greek & Zor. (sp???) traditions that were dualistic.

    *In mainline Jewish tradition, Satan is the prosecuting attorney for the Almighty at your trial about how you have behaved, not some kind of equal but evil force.  Pagels has written about this extensively, but I haven’t had the guts to read any of her books, bc way too depressing.  She used to research the Crusades I think.

  46. 46.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    I just heard on the radio news that one of the justices stated that this decision will turn/tone down the divisiveness in our nation. DA FUQ?! Talk about huffing your own farts, holy shit! Wow, talk about being out of touch with reality if you think this will quiet down the divisiveness out there.

    The supreme court is high on their own supply if they think they can control the temperature of the public with a ruling like this. I don’t care if the three sane justices signed on to this, the statement that the court can calm the nation while TFG is trashing it is bonkers.

  48. 48.

    Ruckus

    As someone who’s had to deal directly with a parent with dementia I can say that because he lived for a time in a setting for folks that had dementia/Alzheimers, I’ve seen it up close and it only goes one way – worse. I believe it depends on the cause of the dementia and the individual for treatment protocol. But once it starts, it only goes one way – worse.

  49. 49.

    NotMax

    cheerios

    More like cream of mush.

    A brass figligee with bronze oak-leaf palm to those who can name the film whence comes that fictitious product. ;)

  51. 51.

    cain

    @Sanjeevs:  Too busy working on 3 jobs, 4 kids, and student loans.

    I think a lot of folks just look at this politics stuff as a tug of war, and one side gaining the other side gaining – and that’s because we’ve turned it into a reality tv show where they aren’t anything.

    What really blew my mind is that people weren’t paying attention when the country was literally shut down. You’d think there would be a hyperfocus on what’s going on politically. Nope.

  52. 52.

    WaterGirl

    @Scout211: It’s 32 JUST FROM YESTERDAY’s speeches..  Yikes.

    edit: I think the ones who compile these things should only include ones that are obvious.  And this one video changes from one to another so quickly that it’s hard to track.   I don’t think they are helping their cause.

  54. 54.

    Dan B

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: This Supreme Court Justice has no idea the existential dread Trump creates for LGBT+ people, immigrants, and people of color.  The bubble of privilege and security of this elite is horrifying.

  62. 62.

    KrackenJack

    An interview with a psychiatrist who says Trump’s “phonemic paraphasias” is a sign of his worsening dementia

    I think this is useful for giving the media permission to cover it. Plus, some of the points will diffuse into the zeitgeist (like Swift’s dating status) and get to people in Fox News bubble. Once they are primed to listen to for it, they can’t miss it. True believers will find excuses, but it will shift some people on fence.

    A percent here, a percent there.

    I doubt there will be a presidential debate this year, but I don’t see any downside to Dark Brandon goading Cheetolini incessantly about it. The actual President and his advisors will may see the risk/reward differently.

  64. 64.

    FelonyGovt

    As another person with current and recent experience with two family members with dementia, the clips posted definitely show that he is losing it, and I really hope these are shown far and wide in the coming months. He is repeatedly confusing one person for another (Haley for Pelosi) and not realizing the error and immediately correcting himself, as you or I would. He is slurring his words something awful and is obviously forgetting how to say words or how they end.

    I do agree that a less frantic, thrown together montage would work better and would look less like cherry  picking.

    I wonder if he will make a speech at the convention or if they come up with some BS reason why he won’t.

  70. 70.

    Josie

    @FelonyGovt: “I wonder if he will make a speech at the convention or if they come up with some BS reason why he won’t.”

    This is what I was asking in an earlier comment. How will he be able to get through a formal speech on the last night of the convention? I doubt that there are any drugs that can fix this, and it will be at night, which is when dementia patients are usually sundowning.

  71. 71.

    zhena gogolia

    @cain: I don’t think it’s cherry picking. It’s not a slip or a gaffe. With Nikki Haley, he goes on for at least 30 seconds, and never corrects himself. He knows he’s talking about his primary opponent, but he’s conflating her with an entirely different person. In the one about Saudi Arabia and Russia, although he’s reading from a teleprompter, his face suddenly goes blank and he can’t recover. I don’t consider that cherry-picking.

  73. 73.

    Ohio Mom

    @Lyrebird: I thought this was a good summary of the state of Judaism in Jesus’ time: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/portrait/judaism.html

    The essays in the link point out that like everything else from olden days, we are depending on records produced by people who had axes to grind; we don’t know anything about what the majority of everyday people thought.

    To me, the descriptions of the varying sects vying for primacy sound like Judaism today. There isn’t one version of Judaism, that’s the result of having a religion that doesn’t have an hierarchy. (Though Catholics have a definite hierarchy and they have dissension and differing factions too).

  75. 75.

    cain

    @Anoniminous: I see but I think there – Satan was an entity that wanted to show that Job was not faithful. Not the full blown Lucifer type adversary or anything related to Lucifer rebelling against God.

    When you read the wikipedia on Satan – Yaweh is some kind of prick who apparently enjoys letting other people test the faith of his worshipers. Typical Babylonian bullshit I reckon. :-) I mean, what about all the “God sees in your soul” etc etc.

  76. 76.

    Matt McIrvin

    @cain: “Satan” appears in the book of Job, but he’s that “prosecuting attorney” character, the Adversary–the guy making the case that Job is no good

    eta: he’s definitely not the same character as Lucifer. I’m pretty sure the Christian Devil is a conflation of several different references from the Hebrew Bible.

  77. 77.

    cain

    @zhena gogolia: I’m referring to the links showing clips of him making gaffes. We don’t get 30 seconds, we get 6 seconds of video – it isn’t enough to know whether he corrected himself or what. So it looks like cherry picking because there is only like 2-3 seconds of video of each gaffe.

  78. 78.

    LesGS

    @Anoniminous: But that Satan is not “the Devil” as understood by Christians. He’s an “adversary” along the lines of a challenging lawyer, not as Evil challenging Good.

  79. 79.

    zhena gogolia

    @cain: For my money, they should just show the whole thing where he talks about Nikki Haley, and another one where he’s talking about Obama but means Biden, and Brian Kilmeade corrects him.

  81. 81.

    jonas

    As I’ve observed a number of times, the problem is that Trump is so gobsmackingly stupid and ignorant of just about every major topic he pontificates on, it comes off like dementia-addled ranting most of the time. It would be like getting me really drunk, and then telling me I had to call a cricket match while pretending to be the world’s greatest authority on the subject.

  83. 83.

    Bobby Thomson

    The running against Obama thing is a dogwhistle to the people who think Obama is really pulling all the strings in the Biden administration.  Not remembering his own wife’s name?  Significant brain fart.

    I would say that 90% of Trump’s verbal missteps can be attributed to him being high as a kite and the results of his decades-long addiction to Adderall.

  85. 85.

    TBone

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    “In my view, Justice Amy Coney Barrett reveals the Court’s actual motives in her separate concurrence:

    “In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency. The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up.”

    Put simply, the Court allowed Trump to stay on the ballot in order to avoid an outcome that would raise the “national temperature.” My objection is that Judges should not bend to the will of an insurrectionist simply to placate his supporters.” – Marc Elias early afternoon email today

  86. 86.

    Roberto el oso

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: In her opinion Amy Comey Barrett took it upon herself to scold the 3 other women justices for their “stridency”, when they should have been “bringing the temperature of the country down”. A smug, over-the-top, culty Xtian lecturing a Jewish-, a Latina-, and an African-American woman. Not a good look, but I’m sure ACB knows exactly what she’s doing, Handmaidensplaining proper deference/subservience to the male justices.

  87. 87.

    Geoduck

    @Bobby Thomson: If that really is an intentional dog-whistle, it’s still really dumb because he needs more than just the True Believers to win, and to everyone else, it comes across as a sympton of, yes, dementia.

  89. 89.

    Ruckus

    @FelonyGovt:

    As I said above, I’ve also seen this in real life. This is the slide, and for  some folks it slides a lot faster than others. But that ball will not roll back up that hill. It only rolls down and gathers speed as the degree of the hill gets steeper, which it also always does.

  90. 90.

    Ruckus

    @Josie:

    I doubt that there are any drugs that can fix this.

    There are not. Some can slow it slightly but my experience is that slightly is doing a lot of work.

  91. 91.

    Anoniminous

    @LesGS: ​
     
    Right. Christians took the name and mucked around with it until it was a better fit for their form of monotheistic psychosis.

    Stanford Neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky has a good lecture on the Biological wellsprings of Religion.

  92. 92.

    Chris T.

    @Bobby Thomson:

    … and the results of his decades-long addiction to Adderall.

    His (ab)use of uppers (Adderall is branded a mix of amphetamine salts) likely contributes to the degradation, yes. I suspect he’s become dependent on it.

  94. 94.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Bobby Thomson: The running against Obama thing is a dogwhistle to the people who think Obama is really pulling all the strings in the Biden administration.

    It’s both! He does sometimes make jokes about Obama, but he also genuinely makes a lot of dementia-related noises about Obama and Putin where he’s really clearly forgotten who the president is, or who it was

  96. 96.

    karen marie

    Speaking of plea deals –

    Bob Menendez’s codefendant, “Jose Uribe, a former insurance agent in Menendez’s hometown of Union City, copped to seven counts during a Manhattan federal court hearing, including charges of wire fraud, obstruction of justice and tax evasion — and agreed to “cooperate fully” with investigators”

    I’m linking to the NY Post just because nothing matters anymore.

  97. 97.

    FelonyGovt

    @Bobby Thomson: even if it is “just”Adderall, it’s still fair game pointing out all these glitches, both (1) to compare to Biden’s being elderly but still all-there and (2) as something the American public should be aware of.

    Cf. “The Prime Minister looks tired”.

  98. 98.

    anitamargarita

    Don’t care for Cheerios myself, but this is unfair. His brain is more like anoxic sludge

  102. 102.

    Hob

    @cain: ​
    I agree that the six-second clip isn’t much by itself. I do not agree that the other montages people have linked to, where there are a bunch of brief things, are cherry-picking or impossible to make any judgment on. You’ve already mentioned several times that you want more context to know if he corrected himself or not– but you can clearly see in a lot of these that he did not, at least not in the way that you or I would do immediately after stumbling. If he backed up 5 seconds later and tried again, well that would at least show that he knew he fucked up, but that would still be a whole lot of verbal stumbles of types that he didn’t use to do. But very often, even if you don’t know the whole rest of the sentence, you can easily hear that he’s plowing straight ahead into the rest of the sentence without noticing the mistake. If you can listen to all these things and not hear that… I don’t know what to say, I guess we just have different ears. And if these were all made twice as long, then it’d take twice as long to watch the same amount of evidence, and fewer people would do that.

    Also, I don’t think everyone making these videos had a goal of proving that Trump is definitely all fucked up. There’s also the goal of suggesting, to people who are on the fence, that Biden is not all fucked up. They are rebuttals to similar videos that were made against Biden, where the idea was that frequently stumbling on words is automatically a sign of dementia regardless of context; the point (of at least some of them that I’ve seen) is “Look, you can make anyone look stupid by compiling all their stumbles, at least you can definitely do that with Trump, it’s not like Biden is so special in that way.”

    And… people have heard a whole lot of both of these guys talking for many years. We all know what Biden sounds like, and he’s sounded pretty much like that for decades. We all know what Trump sounds like, and he was not quite this weird in this way in the past, even 3 seconds at a time.

  104. 104.

    Geminid

    @karen marie: Sounds like prosecutors have Menendez wrapped up even tighter now. I look for him to take a plea deal before too long.

    Speaking of plea deals, I wonder what the deal is with George Santos. Seems like prosecutors would have resolved his situation by now. It looks like a simple case, but maybe it’s not; maybe Santos can incriminate other New York Republicans. I sure hope so.

  105. 105.

    Hob

    @MisterForkbeard: I said this in the other thread but… Trump is not big on subtle dog-whistles. I mean, he does definitely throw in things that a polite NY Times reporter could interpret in an innocent way but that we know are cutesy euphemisms. But if he’s trying to say Biden might as well be Obama, or Haley might as well be Pelosi, because they’re both so bad— he’ll point out that that’s what he’s saying! Not later that day or the next day, but in the same sentence. He can’t resist immediately explaining the “joke” he just told, and then adding stuff like “That’s something I made up, do you like that?” or “Some people say it’s Biden, but I like to say Obama because it’s really Obama in charge– I came up with that”, etc. He does that over and over and over again; his fans love it, or at least he pretty clearly thinks they do. It’s a huge part of his schtick.

  106. 106.

    Jinchi

    I want to believe, but does anyone have a link to a clear example of him short-circuiting for more than a couple of seconds?

    The problem is that he’s always come across as a particularly stupid man. His limited vocabulary, his repetition of the same word to describe itself in a sentence. The belief that he could get away with drawing a line on a map in Sharpie and think no-one would notice who did it. The absurd, conspicuously fabricated anecdotes, stated as fact. Is he a liar, an idiot, delusional? How could you tell if this guy has dementia?

    It’s enough that he’s not performing at any level of competency.

  107. 107.

    Jinchi

    @Hob: or Haley might as well be Pelosi, because they’re both so bad

    The media usually give him a pass, but in many cases, it’s clear he thinks the person he’s talking about is someone else entirely. He didn’t accidentally call Haley by Pelosi’s name.

    He explicitly and in detail described that the woman who was running against him for the Republican nomination had been responsible for security at the Capitol on January 6th, and that she’d rejected his offer of 10,000 national guard troops to defend it.

    That’s not a slip of the tongue and it doesn’t matter that he came up with a cover story weeks after he said it.

  108. 108.

    russell

    he’s gonna take the years like a good soldier.

    the line between Trump and mafia boss is vanishingly narrow.

  109. 109.

    Geminid

    Former Israeli Defense Minister, current War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz is in Washington. He conferred with Vice President and National Security Advisor Jake Sherman today at the White House. Then Gantz headed over to the Capitol to talk to legislators. Someone posted a picture of him walking into Mitch McConnell’s office.

    Gantz is scheduled to meet with Secretary of State Blinken tomorrow and then fly on to London to confer with UK officials.

  110. 110.

    different-church-lady

    1) Trump is demented, and voters want someone they can identify with.

    2)

    Trump is bragging about passing the MOCA, a screening test for dementia, as if it made him MENSA, when it’s a test any kindergartener should pass. Specialists tell me a patient can be in steep diagnosable organic decline for an extended period before they fail the MOCA.

    There’s only one candidate who feels it’s constantly necessary to prove he’s not a dolt, and it ain’t Joe Biden.

  113. 113.

    Soprano2

    @New Deal democrat: So far my husband doesn’t have sundowning. He’s actually better at night, but he was always a night person. But yeah, I definitely think TFG has some kind of mental damage. I’ve see it suggested that it could be from decades of drug abuse. That seems plausible to me.

    Speaking of, what is George W doing these days?

  115. 115.

    Hob

    @Jinchi: I wasn’t at all trying to imply that it was a slip of the tongue! I agree that his marbles are loose, for exactly the reasons you said— I think if you saw my other comments, that would’ve been clearer. In this comment I was responding to the general notion that Trump might sometimes deliberately misspeak, in a subtle dog-whistle way; the example that the other commenter had proposed was the Obama/Biden thing, and Trump was the one who very unconvincingly tried to argue that Haley/Pelosi and Obama/Biden were both subtle jokes. I’m saying that that would be implausible for him even if the content weren’t so obviously confused.

    And I’m not sure why you bothered saying “it doesn’t matter that he came up with a cover story weeks after he said it”, since I already had said in that same comment that I wouldn’t believe his cover story even if he said it later the same day.

  117. 117.

    Soprano2

    @FelonyGovt: When he was president he kept saying the flu pandemic was in 1917, even though he was told numerous times that was wrong! Point being, he’s been doing it for awhile now.

  118. 118.

    Fair Economist

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Question on Greek mythology and Christianity for the BJ hive mind. Why does the Christian devil look like the Greek god Pan? What color is Pan/devil

    Christianity got its concept of “devil” from Judaism, which got it from Zoroastrianism, which was just using the Indo-Aryan word for “god” (deva/devi in Sanskrit, related to “deus”/”divine” in Latin) to describe previous-worshipped entities, which they treated as evil rather than attempting to completely deny.

    All the pagan mythologies (including modern Hindu religion) seem to descend continuously from some original Proto-Indo-European (PIE) religion. Some characteristics can be identified as shared between them (especially between head gods, typically Skyfather variants). Pan seems to descend from a PIE pastoral god and I’ll bet the Indo-Aryans had one, and its characteristics got borrowed for the head devil of Judaism and later Christianity.

  120. 120.

    Virginia

    I’ve been saying, the media needs to show side by sides of interviews with the rump in the 80’s and his current ramblings.  It’s absolutely clear how diminished he is today.  That needs to be shown everywhere.

  121. 121.

    Soprano2

    @Ruckus: I think having his kidneys back up and spending 5 days in the hospital made my husband decline two or three “levels”. That kind of thing is really hard on people with dementia. If TFG got sick, whoo boy…..

  122. 122.

    wjca

    @Other MJS: Dementia is irrelevant. He’s God’s Imperfect Vessel.

    But the vessel isn’t just imperfect.  Increasingly, it’s leaking.

  123. 123.

    wjca

    @Baud: Baud!/Pan! 20XX!

    Need to amend the Constitution first.  Because Pan was clearly born in Greece, not in the United States.  Sorry about that.

  124. 124.

    Kirk

    I find myself wondering whether there will be debates. Or rather, whether the TFG or his handlers will win the battle of whether there will be debates.

  125. 125.

    Fair Economist

    @Kirk: I’m not wondering about debates. Trump can’t remember his current wife’s name and mistook Jean Carroll for one of his previous wives. His handlers won’t let him debate, no way, no how.

  126. 126.

    Geminid

    @Kirk: I will be surprised if there is even one debate. I expect Trump’s people will bob and weave and run out the clock with spurious excuses. Biden is a good debater, and Trump’s just not up to it now.

  128. 128.

    sdhays

    @Kirk: I think the question increasingly becomes what they can convince an increasingly addled Trump to do? Can they convince him to do a morning/afternoon convention speech? Can they convince him not to debate? Does he become more easily controlled, or more defiant as he refuses to accept he’s losing his grasp on reality to the extent even his supporters can see?

  130. 130.

    Scout211

    @Kirk: I find myself wondering whether there will be debates

    If I had a say, my vote would be to end the traditional presidential debates.  They have outgrown their usefulness and value in today’s world of 24/7 media and social media.

    The last two presidential debates with Trump breaking all the rules of the debate and generally being an ass (creeping up on Hillary and stalking her onstage, bringing his whole unmasked family while COVID positive) just made me decide I am done.  I hope the news media and the national committees decide that they are done, too.

    I’m so old that I remember watching the debates in order to actually learn things about the candidates and what they stood for.  Now it’s both candidates just doing their stump speech and ignoring the questions. And the questions seem particular bad now, too.

    My guess:  They will move ahead with planning for a debate or two.  But in the end, there will not be debates, at least in the traditional format.

    Good riddance, IMHO.

  131. 131.

    gene108

    I assume his lips had to be surgically removed from Trump’s anus before he could plead,

    His severance agreement promises him $2, if he keeps his mouth shut.

    Seems to me his motivation is to collect the $2 million.

    From November 2023:

    Weisselberg inked a $2 million severance agreement with the Trump Organization in association with his departure from the company, to be paid in $250k installments over a period of two years. As of Friday, Weisselberg had only received the first three installments of the promised severance,

    SNIP

    Amer also questioned Eric Trump on the terms of the severance agreement, in which Weisselberg promises not to verbally or in writing disparage the Trump Organization or associated entities and not to disparage the organization’s current or former officers.

    When asked by Amer if Weisselberg, under the terms of the agreement, was being paid not to disparage the Organization and its current or former officers — particularly Eric Trump, his father, and his siblings Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump — Eric Trump stated that the language used in the severance agreement appeared “standard” to him and that he would not disparage Weisselberg.

    SNIP

    Barring acts of testimony or by subpoena, Weisselberg also agreed he would not communicate with or cooperate with any entity or individual bringing adverse claims against the organization, the agreement states.

    “Would that include the New York Attorney General’s office?” Amer asked Eric Trump.

    “Are you adverse to us?” Eric Trump retorted, reiterating that the language highlighted “seems pretty boilerplate.” “Yes, I think the whole world knows you’re adverse to us, so I would say yes.”

    https://www.cfodive.com/news/trump-organization-ex-cfo-severance-terms-ny-ag-fire/698775/

  133. 133.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @schrodingers_cat: the old gods became the demons of the new religion.  Seriously though I think that it was that Pan was associated with licentiousness and nature, and the Christian god was separated from nature.

    ETA: generally the Devil was associated with fire so dark red or black (although it’s been a long time since I’ve read Dante’s Divine Comedy and the ninth circle of hell where the Devil was trapped was ice)

  137. 137.

    Ruckus

    @Jeffro:

    Maybe think about how many people dive as deep into the entire situation as we do here.

    Also, many people make up their minds and it takes a lot to change most minds.

    IOW one or two gaffs and those who are all in are not going to change. But as time goes on and SFB gets farther and farther into his can’t tell or speak even as his shitty self did a year ago segment of dementia a lot of his followers will fall off. That is if he hasn’t been confined to an old farts home or in a straight jacket somewhere.

    And remember that old age dementia is a one way street. Some don’t start down it till way into their 90s, some are stuck in high gear around their late 60s. I’m predicting that by the time running for office comes around again, he will be many, many miles down the road to no question dementia. Hell he’s already at least in low gear.

  140. 140.

    Ruckus

    @Kathleen:

    I’d bet money on it. He’s been a clown his entire life but he got elected to be president. With an ego like his that made him 20 ft tall, handsome and miles above everyone else, which of course he was not close to in any way.

    He’s lied about his life, his money, everything. He’s the guy that thought that his everything made him the perfect human. Most of the rest of humanity knows that he’s not all that, but is a used anything found in the bathroom.

  141. 141.

    randy khan

    @caringandsensitive:

    My guess is that if I were a prosecutor I wouldn’t want to vouch for the credibility pf a convicted perjurer as my witness

    Bingo.  And the guilty plea will hurt Trump in the appeal of the civil judgment, which probably is the biggest reason the prosecutors accepted it without much more.

  142. 142.

    Citizen Alan

    @Jinchi:

    The problem is that he’s always come across as a particularly stupid man. His limited vocabulary, his repetition of the same word to describe itself in a sentence. The belief that he could get away with drawing a line on a map in Sharpie and think no-one would notice who did it. The absurd, conspicuously fabricated anecdotes, stated as fact. Is he a liar, an idiot, delusional? How could you tell if this guy has dementia?

    If Newt Gingrich was a dumb person’s idea of what a smart person sounded like, Donald Trump is an absolute moron’s idea of what an absolute moron sounds like while brilliantly faking it.

  153. 153.

    Paul in KY

    @Geminid: We just have to goad him into it. His ego will not let him take being taunted about being scared to debate tired old Joe Biden.

  157. 157.

    The Lodger

    @Leto: I do not need Barrett thinking she’s figured me out, or she’s figured any sentient creature out.

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