Losing it

This is it: President Trump is losing his mind. He has been slipping for a long time, but now it looks as if he is over the edge. His most recent interview on Fox showed a paranoid man desperately trying to cling to his pathetic personal bubble of delusions rather than just admit that he misheard a Fox report about a Breitbart article and made some crazy stuff up to fill in the blanks just before he sent out his disastrous tweets about President Obama having ordered a wire tap on him in Trump Tower.

His incoherent ramblings didn't make any kind of sense. His story shifted during the bizarre interview, with President Trump stuttering and hesitating as if he was making things up on the spot. He said he had evidence that was going to be submitted "soon", but he also admitted it was something he saw on TV, and that "certain things" would be revealed over the next couple of weeks. He also claimed he read "something" to support his allegations in the New York Times, which he has been calling a "failing" newspaper. After placing the burden on the Congress Intelligence committee to find proof for his absolutely baseless accusations, he suddenly said "Let's see whether or not I prove it. I just don't choose to do it right now." Apparently, he just needs some time to find the proof he totally has already, and besides, the truth will come out eventually anyway, and he will be proven right. Right? Take that, dishonest leftist media bastards at every news organization except Fox! Everybody but Fox is fake news. And some of Fox is fake as well. You may think he's crazy, but he will be proven right. Soon. It's true. Just you wait and see.

No.

The wait is over, Mr. President, and the truth in the matter, the truth which you are so desperately afraid of telling, is that you don't have any kind of proof other than a Fox News mention of a trashy Breitbart fake news article about an old Mark Levin radio show, a news blurb which you misunderstood and stubbornly refuse to cite as your only source. You could still put this issue to rest with a simple retraction and an apology, and your failure to do so is not just strange - it's sick. If this is a distraction, it's a strange choice of distraction, because it is absolutely devastating to your reputation and your ability to get anything done during whatever remains of your presidency.

President Donald J Trump is mentally ill, suffering from delusions and paranoia, and needs to be forcefully removed from office before he does something rash and hurts people. The United States cannot function properly as long as its highest office is held by a deranged old fool trying to fake it on his job. He was in above his head even before his mental breakdown.

Just to show you how far gone his mind is, here's one exchange from that extremely friendly and soft Fox interview:

Q: Who do you talk to for military advice right now?

A: Well, I watch the shows. I mean, I really see a lot of great — you know, when you watch your show, and all of the other shows, and you have the generals, and you have certain people –.

President Donald Trump claims, seriously, that he gets his military advice from watching TV. Oh, and some generals and whatnot. But first and foremost, from watching TV.

This president is crazy.

Disclaimer: these are my opinions. You can have them if you want, but they are still mine.

"Believe me"

President Trump went to Nashville on March 15 to hold a rally. Yes, the election is over, and the next presidential election is not until 2020, but apparently, Donald Trump needs to have his ego reaffirmed by a cheering crowd. It didn't go down too well, though, and the crowd wasn't large enough by far to fill the 9,700 seats.

The Republican attempt at a health care bill is facing strong opposition and internal debate. The revised version of the Muslim travel ban was blocked just hours before the rally. The President's popularity is historically low and dropping in the polls, his unsubstantiated claim that he was wire tapped by President Obama remains unsubstantiated, his economic ties to foreign powers is being investigated, et cetera. His growing list of setbacks and annoyances rained on his parade in Nashville - figuratively speaking, of course, because rain never falls on parades and speeches by Donald Trump.

In a passage where he whined about having his precious travel ban blocked, for the same reasons as his original travel ban, President Trump said "The ruling makes us look weak" as a country, adding "By the way, we no longer are". And then, to top it off, he couldn't resist adding his verbal tic: "Believe me." Saying "believe me", "it's true" and other similar things is often an indication to the opposite. People who are telling the truth seldom feel the urge to reinforce the fact that they are telling the truth, while liars are often worried, at least subconsciously, that their lies will be exposed.

Well, Mr. President, America not only looks weak, but it is weak. You are a weak president, and you are not leading the country. Instead, you have weakened it by dividing it and pitting its citizens against each other, you have paralyzed the government by your sheer incompetence, you have been focusing on far too many unimportant, petty squabbles, and you have been telling big fat lies instead of doing your job. The world is mocking you, for very good reasons, and your enemies are rejoicing. And, just to make it absolutely clear:

No, Mr. President. We don't believe you.

The Nothing Burger

The term "nothing burger" has been a popular expression for Republicans commenting on the various scandals surrounding the Trump presidency. Their claim that there's nothing to the accusations, that it's just talk and no substance, is becoming harder to defend with any credibility as time passes and new embarrassing facts emerge.

Instead, we see another "nothing burger" take shape: the achievements of the Trump administration.

None of the many lofty promises Donald Trump made during his campaign have materialized. Nothing he has tried to accomplish has worked out. Not even his high profile, urgent executive order on the travel ban has worked. Its second version has now been blocked by a court injunction, much like the first one, and it seems unlikely that it will ever be enacted.

President Trump is a nothing burger, an ignorant man without any real skills and no long term plan, a blabbering fool trying to pretend he has what it takes to be president. His scam is now falling apart, and it will end badly.

Things that make you go "Hmmm"

Yesterday's tweet by Donald Trump Jr, sent out in response to last night's revelation by Rachel Maddow of Donald Trump's tax return from 2005, is interesting:

Thank you Rachel Maddow for proving to your #Trump hating followers how successful @realDonaldTrump is & that he paid $40mm in taxes! #Taxes

True enough, President Trump's taxes have been under scrutiny, with suspicions being raised that he pays no taxes at all because of a huge write-off from a decade ago, and people have suggested that he might no longer be wealthy, but "in the red", his total debt being larger than his assets. It has also been suggested that his business is no longer turning a profit, which puts him at risk of bankruptcy. However, the 2005 tax return doesn't prove nor disprove any of that. What his finances looked like 12 years ago really has nothing to do with what they look like today. For all we know, he could now be losing money at an alarming rate and be bankrupt. If that is the case, a suitable diversion would be to release some partial income and tax information from back when he still turned a profit and paid taxes, and pretend that it came from some mysterious, malicious source rather than from Donald Trump himself.

2005, a few years before his financial troubles allegedly started in 2008, was most likely a particularly good year for Trump. The source behind the leak seems to have cherry-picked this year and released only the unspecific summary part of the tax return. It's actually pretty likely that this is a "fake leak" from Donald Trump himself or one of his close associates. After a few days, he can say "Was this your best shot? Pathetic! (Sad.)", or something to that effect, and hope for the public interest in his tax returns to fade away. I don't think it's going to work, but it's not an entirely bad move. Not very well executed, true, but not completely stupid either.

It was a bit surprising to see Rachel Maddow jump on this, because she and her team seem smarter than that. Perhaps she deliberately took the bait to see what would happen? The response from the White House made an unfounded accusation of her breaking the law. That might not be enough to constitute a formal abuse of authority or intimidation, but at the very least it makes them look bad. Seeing how unusually coordinated and swift their follow-up has been so far is also suspicious, and interesting. She might just be stringing them along to see where it leads, and then drop the bomb about this being a fake leak. The Trump administration has a history of messing up its information management plans rather badly.

In any case, this is probably not the end of this story. If Donald Trump is prepared to put his entire presidency at risk rather than release his recent tax returns, they must surely contain some very juicy secrets. Things like that make people very curious indeed.

Diminishing returns

Yesterday, the first two pages of one of Donald Trump's old tax returns found their way to Rachel Maddow, reporter on MSNBC, and were widely disseminated across the media landscape. The general verdict is "meh". This is most likely just another distraction by Donald Trump and his associates to diminish the relevant news around his business ties and possible vulnerability to foreign interests - possibly even far-reaching allegiances to a foreign power that run deep in his administration.

The tax return is incomplete, it's just the first two pages, so the supplementary information on his creditors and sources of income is missing. The form is from 2005, before the Trump Organization ran into financial trouble around 2008 and started making shady deals with corrupt banks and foreign players suspected of money laundry. The numbers are in no way damaging or embarrassing to Donald Trump - quite the contrary. They merely show that back in 2005, he was still a successful businessman making a $150 million profit and paying a perfectly reasonable amount of income tax. Why anyone would leak this particular document to the press is a mystery.

Or, maybe it isn't such a mystery after all. This could actually be Donald Trump himself leaking an innocuous document of his own choosing to the press. The form is not signed, but says "client copy". This is not a document from the IRS, but Donald Trump's own copy, and only very few people close to him would have access to it. Furthermore, the reaction from the White House was very quick indeed, in the form of a fairly long, well written and correctly spelled official statement. The text contains unmistakable Trump jargon, which indicates that he was involved in writing it, but it was obviously edited, cleaned up and released by someone else. The statement made a point of criticizing the "dishonest press" for being "desperate for ratings" and wrongfully accusing them of "totally illegal" activity, but the White House confirmed the authenticity of the leaked document without any hesitation. Donald Trump Jr also reacted rather too quickly via Twitter in a suspiciously calm and calculated manner, slandering the media and the "Trump haters". Donald Trump himself remained silent, which is highly unusual. We saw no furious Twitter outburst before the official response, which seems carefully premeditated.

All in all, this looks very much like a badly orchestrated and largely ineffective deflection, using a move taken straight out of Donald Trump's playbook from his career as a businessman and celebrity. He used to call journalists under a phony name with a phony voice (which failed to fool anyone) and leak some benign inside information spiced with a few self-aggrandizing lies. This is most likely just another dishonest move from the crooked 45th president to distract reporters from the real issues.

I could say "Nothing to see here. Move along", but Rachel Maddow is no fool. By announcing hours in advance that she was going to show Donald Trump's tax returns, she cried "wolf" before the show, but her scoop failed to impress anyone. She knew that, and it seems unlikely that she would put her reputation at risk for something this small and insignificant. I suspect there is more to come.

The President is naked

"Liar, liar, pants on fire". President* Trump's constant lies have now reached the point where any sane person must realize that he is talking complete nonsense. White House spokespeople are faced with the impossible task of twisting and spinning his ridiculous lies into something that doesn't sound crazy, and they are making a terribly botched job of it. President* Donald Trump is now being ridiculed even by many of his former supporters, and he no longer has any credibility outside of his most hardcore base of fact-resistant voters.

This is not normal, but he is very obviously not going to stop. Therefore, while we are waiting for the investigations into his misconduct to bear fruit and hopefully either impeach him or force him to resign, we need to stop paying any attention to anything he says. Some of us should keep calling him out on his lies, and people with a dark sense of humor might wish to tune in now and then for the bizarre entertainment value, but it is time to stop believing anything that comes out of his mouth. He lies about anything, and he lies all the time. Pay attention to what he is doing, but ignore what he is saying.

The President is naked. He always was, but people are finally noticing. And it's not a pretty sight.

The irony curtain

We were just treated to this amazing Twitter message from President* Trump:

It is amazing how rude much of the media is to my very hard working representatives. Be nice, you will do much better!

I literally laughed out loud. The irony of this is completely off the charts. The most rude and slanderous president in history, the person who recently accused the previous president of a serious crime with absolutely no evidence to back it up, the person who has constantly been spreading lies about anyone opposing him, the person who mocked a disabled reporter and treats women like dirt, the person who thinks he gets to decide what is the truth, who peddles conspiracy theories straight from alt-right fake news sites but calls actual, serious news outlets "fake news", the person who calls media representatives "enemies of the American people" and consistently sends members of his administration to tell manipulative lies to media, that person asks the media to "be nice"? Wow. Let me repeat something from the Twitter comment field, where @realDonaldTrump obviously never looks:

It is amazing how rude President Trump is to our very hard working media representatives. Be nice, you will do much better!

The job of the media representatives is to disseminate information and call BS when they see it. I think they are doing just great. We are way past being nice, and it is a situation entirely of your own making, Mr. President*. Or, to put it in smaller words you can understand: Trump fail, 100%. Sad!