"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.