A House Divided

In the aftermath of Steve Bannon leaving the White House, a feud is brewing between two billionaire financiers for the Republicans. The Mercer family is standing by Bannon, while the Koch brothers are sticking with Trump, and they are starting to attack each other.

The Republican party is in disarray and has a deep existential crisis. It is hard to imagine it emerging from this debacle without taking serious and lasting damage. It might even end up splitting the party into moderates and conservatives. The situation in Congress, where the struggle to find common ground between the widely separated extremes of the GOP representatives, is an indication that a split would be needed to create a functioing political party.

Who knows, breaking up the GOP might be a first step towards creating a more healthy political landscape in the US. A system so strongly focused on having only two parties is not a proper democracy. Discourse and development benefits from diversity.

It would be interesting to see the Democrats split up as well. Some moderate Democrats would probably be better off joining the moderate Republicans, leaving the more liberal Democrats with more freedom to advocate for a stronger left leaning policy. Perhaps we would even see a social democrat or "labor" party with views that actually lean true left even in an international perspective. And of course, the right wing extremists and the religious nuts could be pushed to form their own parties (something like "nationalists" and "evangelists"), instead of poisoning the Republicans with their bigotry and racism.

A new constellation of moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats could actually be a party of, you know, reasonable people trying to govern. Wouldn't that be nice?

Living In The State Of Denial

Donald Trump is big on denial.

Didn't win the popular vote? Deny it and invent a story about massive voter fraud to back up your denial. Not getting anything done? Deny it and make an outlandish claim that you have done more in six months than any other president in modern time. Problems accepting the overwhelming scientific evidence on global warming? Deny science and claim thay you know better. Failing to attract a large crowd in your "rallies"? Deny it and inflate the number of participants far beyond credibility. Accused of crimes? Deny everything. Said stupid things? Deny it, even in the face of recordings. Problems facing reality? Deny it and substitute your own fantasy world where you are smart and successful instead of a failing, stupid loser.

Denial doesn't work. At least, not for long.

Protection From What?

Recent reports on the behavior of the orange scary clown currently occupying the White House tell of a president consumed by rage and obsessed with ending the Russia investigation. Trump has been lashing out at senators for not protecting him against Robert Muller's investigations, and anything that has been revealed in the matter of collusion with Russian interests during his campaign has been met with his feeble and ineffective, often counterproductive, attempts at sweeping it under the rug.

This is not the behavior of an innocent person. If he is obsessed with the issue and thinks he needs protection from a criminal investigation, he obviously has something to hide. Donald Trump is a complete and utter failure on the job, and in trying to hide and deny his crimes in a manner that would be embarrassing to a six year old child, he is now his own worst enemy. The president only needs to be protected from himself.

And the country, sadly enough, needs to he protected from its president.

Trump Unmasked

Donald Trump has cut the act and is showing his real self, and it's ugly. He is now so toxic that he is shunned by his own party. Nobody wants to go on TV and defend him. His chief of staff is visibly embarrassed by his increasingly open fascist, racist views and the usual incessant lying. He is attacking senators of his own party. The press has stopped pretending that they need to present an unbiased view, and many journalists are now calling out his lies, pointing out his ever more frequent displays of mental breakdown, and calling crazy by name out loud. Donald Trump is going to have to resign soon, or he will turn both parties against him. Impeachment by the current Republican majority Congress is looking more like a real possibility for each failed public appearance.

Afgh Aniston?

In his hastily put together and obviously teleprompted address to the nation about Afghanistan, read half asleep while snivelling much too frequently, Donald Trump claimed that he had "studied Afghanistan extensively from every possible angle", but he still referred to "the Prime Minister of Afghanistan". There is no such person. Whoever wrote that speech is almost as clueless as Trump himself.

This isn't funny any more. The US needs a real president.

Exodus

People are leaving in droves from Donald Trump's administration, either by being fired or of their own accord. In a situation where Trump already had trouble filling important positions, this spells the end of any remaining hope that he would ever be able to pull his act together and make his White House actually work.

Some say the Trump presidency is over. I say he never even had a presidency. He made a brief and feeble attempt at one, but he failed spectacularly. I expect Donald Trump will go down in history as the president that never was, and he will be referred to as "45".

A Stranger To Truth

During an unbelievable rant, where Donald Trump claimed that some white supremacists and Nazis are "very fine people", he also managed to squeeze in two completely unnecessary and stupid lies in one sentence. Speaking about Charlottesville, he went off on a tangent and mentioned that he owned one of the largest wineries in the country, and that it was located in Charlottesville. There is indeed a Trump Winery in Charlottesville, but it is nowhere near the largest in the country, and Donald Trump doesn't own it. It belongs to his son, Eric, and the conpany actually goes to some length to point out that it is not affiliated with Donald Trump and the Trump organization.

Now, why would anyone lie about something so small and insignificant, and something which is so easily checked and falsified? Apparently, Donald Trump is incapable of not telling lies. He is living in a dreamworld of his own making, built from lies that make him feel important and smart, and his tenuous grasp of reality seems to have slipped to the point where he is no longer able to tell the difference between the truth and his constant self-aggrandizing lies. It is unwise to believe anything he says, about anything, ever.

"Campaign Rally" ?

There is something fundamentally wrong with the so-called "campaign rallies" of Donald Trump. A president should not need to be cheered on by his fans, and mass meetings where people of dissenting views are threatened and turned away is a trick taken from a dictator's playbook. Donald Trump may have been a good public speaker once, but now he is mostly ranting and raving, spouting lies big and small at an alarming rate.

The rally in Phoenix next week should be cancelled. With the current tension in the US, we might end up with more clashes between protesters and violent Trump supporters, and more people will be hurt. Let's hope Trump listens to reason.

Bwahahaha. Um. Ow.

OK, reason is not his strongest skill. Let's at least hope nobody ends up dead because of the rally.

Stark Raving Mad

In the wake of the white supremacist terror attack in Charlottesville, which Donald Trump refuses to call a terrorist attack, won't attribute to the long standing culture of violence within the white supremacy movement and refuses to even condemn properly and unambiguously, he has been consumed with a misguided rage against the media for criticizing him - a rage so deep that what little presence of mind and restraint he could previously maintain has now left him completely.

What is being revealed is the real Donald Trump, a deeply disturbed individual with racist, fascist views - a person who has no business being the President of the United States.

Not My Flag

In a belated and weak statement following the domestic terror attack in Charlottesville, Donald Trump tried to downplay the hatred and bigotry by saying that Americans should work together, because "we all pledge allegiance to the same flag".

No. The flag I saw waving amidst the angry white male losers in their twenties was a Nazi banner. As in, a real Nazi banner, not some thinly veiled attempt at a graphic redesign of the swastika in order to pretend that you are not really a Nazi. The old WWII symbol, flown openly and proudly by racist Nazi scum, in the streets of an American city.

These people are terrorists, plain and simple, seeking to take society back to dark times by pushing their hateful, vindictive agenda of white supremacy. They do not deserve respect or collaboration. There is no way to "work together" with them without losing your dignity, your decency, your very soul.

Under the lack of leadership from Donald Trump, and his reluctance to call a spade a spade if said spade is wielded by a white person of Christian faith, the United States is turning into an ugly place.

A Small Man In A Big Suit

A lifetime of crime is rapidly catching up to Donald Trump. He probably thought he would get away with running the White House in the same way he used to run his company: by lying a lot, pushing his employees around and pitting them against each other, and by ignoring the law whenever it's profitable. For a real estate developer in New York, that seems to have worked OK over the years. For the President of the United States, not so much. Thousands of journalists and millions of people are watching him, and not only has it been impossible for him to get away with lies, bullying and bribery; his past transgressions are being uncovered, and his former life is coming back to bite him.

Becoming president was probably the worst that could have happened to Donald Trump. He is no longer in control of the situation, and he is going down in flames.

Shady Oligarchs

The past weekend, we saw Donald Trump ditch his press pool to sneak away and presumably do something he didn't want people to know about. This coincides with a Russian oligarch's private jet landing near his resort in Bedminster. The same thing has happened before, in Mar-a-Lago with a different Russian oligarch.

What is Donald Trump doing with these Russians? Let's hope the investigation will come up with some answers.

Lying Is Hard Work

It's not surprising that Donald Trump can't seem to get any actual governing done. Between his frequent visits to the golf course and his long hours of watching TV, he has been busy trying to manage a huge pack of lies to cover up his crimes. Lying is hard work even if you're good at it: you always need to remember what you said in all your lies and stick with your fabricated story, and you need to keep your lies rooted in reality and make them mesh with the truth in a reasonably plausible manner.

Now, Donald Trump is not even a good liar, and that makes it a lot more difficult for him. As his bad lies are exposed, he needs to make up more lies to maintain his shaky narrative. Bad lies covered up with more bad lies lead to a downward spiral where he has to spend more time defending himself and telling more lies instead of doing anything useful and constructive. That takes a lot of work, and a lot of time. He is bad even at the cover-up, which makes him end up spending most of his time trying to micro-manage his many falsehoods, failing at every turn.

Even if he could do his job, which he very obviously can't, Donald Trump has no time for doing any presidential stuff. Lying to try to stay out of jail is his full time job. And he is as bad at that as he is at everything else.

Fire At Will

Donald Trump seems to think Mike Pence is plotting against him to invoke the 25th amendment and force him out. That might actually be true. However, doing so requires a majority of the cabinet members to agree that the President is unable to fulfil his duties. The reaction we see is that potential threats are being neutralized by Trump by firing people in his cabinet who are less likely to support him, or shuffle them around a bit so they are no longer formally a part of his cabinet.

He might be able to fend off the 25th, but the end is coming, and Trump knows it.