Random Stuff

Stephen Robinson at Public Notice:

Donald Trump frequently demonstrates a level of malignancy that still manages to shock. He doesn’t try to hide it, but unfortunately, the mainstream media covers his disordered thinking as a colorful “quirk” — Trump being Trump — rather than a serious, escalating threat to the nation. This past weekend, Trump’s social media feed was a wellspring of lunacy. He posted more than 50 times on Saturday alone, hurling personal attacks at Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Rosie O’Donnell — one of whom was never actually president. He shared an absurd AI-generated image of himself as a New York Knicks player dunking on Gov. Kathy Hochul. He boasted about defeating “disloyal” Republicans in their primaries. He continued picking fights with the Pope. He attacked the judge who ruled that he couldn’t illegally deface the Kennedy Center with his name. After even half of Milli Vanilli refused to perform at his America 250 event, Trump posted this gaping wound of narcissistic injury:

[I understand Artists are getting ‘the yips’ having to do with their performance on Wednesday, so I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President.]

Until an appearance before cameras yesterday in which he seemed extremely tired and nearly comatose, Trump hadn’t been seen in public since May 27 — the day after his most recent trip to Walter Reed — so while these posts were technically “proof of life,” they were hardly a reassuring statement of mental stability.

Yet Trump’s unhinged posts last weekend weren’t the stuff of front-page coverage at the New York Times or Washington Post, even though there’s a direct line between them and the administration’s ongoing disaster in Iran. After all, it doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to determine, based on the president’s online crashout, that the Trump administration is no closer to a resolution of the war. White House officials keep insisting that they’re just a “couple days” away from a deal with Iran. It’s almost become like the running joke in the 1986 Tom Hanks film, “The Money Pit,” where corrupt contractors keep telling Hanks’ character that repairs will just take another “two weeks.”

[...]

The breakdowns aren’t a ‘distraction’

Legacy media might wish to avoid taking the apparently bold moral position that the US president shouldn’t behave like a crazy person, but in the process they’re ignoring the bombshell story that the sitting one is deranged. The social media screeds and public meltdowns don’t simply demonstrate Trump’s low character. They show a president who’s mentally and morally incapable of effective leadership. In a sane world, every manic posting spree would generate wall-to-wall coverage demanding his resignation or forced removal from office. Yet, instead, the press seemingly covers the president as though he’s two distinct personas — the petty, bigoted shitposter and an otherwise normal if slightly unconventional commander in chief. But the sad reality is that the unstable shitposter is the only Trump, and unfortunately, that’s the one who’s in the room where the “dealmaking” happens.

If Nixon’s irrational paranoia destroyed his presidency, Trump’s presidency, especially during his second term when he’s surrounded himself with nothing but sycophants, exists only to further his personal grievances and vendettas. Nothing matters more to him than callow displays of dominance. Even if we buy the media-enabled GOP narrative that Trump is merely a fun-having jerk who enjoys “trolling” his opponents, it clearly gets in the way of business. Trump’s gross behavior isn’t a wily strategy. It comes off like a psychotic compulsion.

Consider that Trump spent the first year and a half of his second reign of terror alienating America’s allies. He launched vindictive, petty global trade wars. He threatened both Greenland and Canada with annexation — churlishly calling Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney the “future Governor of Canada.” (Last week, Trump shared an article about Canada’s economic challenges with the words “51st State!”) Trump has minimized the contribution our NATO allies have made to the global order. He gutted critical foreign aid and abandoned US soft power.

Other leaders of the actual free world have expressed doubt that America is still on their side. To the extent you could call isolating America from the free world an actual strategy, it all blew up in Trump’s face after he started a war of choice in Iran and desperately needed our allies’ support. [...] Trump is not “crazy like a fox,” unless the specific fox is also mentally unwell. Both the economy and Trump’s approval rating are in free fall. There is obviously no method to his unchecked madness. Last week, Trump casually threatened the Middle East nation of Oman, one of America’s staunchest allies in the region, if it didn’t bend to his shambolic will: “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we will have to blow them up.” It’s frightening how much the public Trump sounds like his most bonkers social media rant.

IN A CONVERSATION with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last August, President Donald Trump noted that Ukraine hadn’t held elections since the Russian invasion, asking whether elections are called off during a war. Before Zelensky could respond, Trump added: “Oh, that’s a good thing.” Five months later, Trump mused apophatically about canceling elections out of disdain for Democrats. Just days after that, in an interview with Reuters, Trump reflected with his typical braggadocio that, given his great success as president, “we shouldn’t even have an election” this November. The sheer number of times Trump brought up canceling elections forced White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to clarify that the president was only joking.

But in light of Trump’s repeated affronts to democracy—including January 6th and his sustained lies about the results of the 2020 election—we are forced to take these remarks seriously. His comments show that he does not understand the essential place elections hold in our constitutional order and, in doing so, reveal a man unfit for the office he holds.

If and when Trump, believing he will lose control of Congress and face a third impeachment, tries to suspend November’s congressional elections, voters need to remember that Americans have held elections through national and international upheavals far more worrisome than anything the forty-seventh president can cite.

In 1862, in the midst of the Civil War that killed as many Americans as every other conflict in the nation’s history combined, Abraham Lincoln did not try to suspend the country’s congressional elections. Nor in 1864, when he ran for a second presidential term against Union General George B. McClellan, did he defy the country’s electoral laws and traditions.

Similarly, in 1898, during America’s war with Spain, William McKinley never tried to call off America’s congressional elections. And, despite warning against the dangers posed to the country’s democratic and economic systems by “radical” Democrats led by William Jennings Bryan, McKinley did not try to block the presidential election in 1900. Since there were no polls to encourage McKinley’s hope of winning, he simply believed Americans would not abandon their regard for traditional political institutions by electing Bryan. He, of course, was right.

Oliver Willis at Daily Kos:

Gregory Bovino, former Border Patrol commander-at-large who was the face of President Donald Trump’s disastrous “Operation Metro Surge” in Minnesota, apparently believes that he can be president. According to NewsNation, Bovino has launched an exploratory committee ahead of the 2028 presidential election. “NewsNation is reporting I’m exploring a run for President in 2028. Here’s the truth: My one and only priority is deporting the 106 million illegals who are here. That’s it,” Bovino wrote on X. “My commitment is simple, liberate America from this invasion and restore our quality of life. If running for President is what it takes to actually get it done, then all options are on the table.” The website for the committee features photos of Bovino in his long black coat, which German media has called a “Nazi look.” The site features the slogan “men fight back” and refers to Bovino, who retired in March, as “The Commander.” Echoing neo-Nazi rhetoric, the site also refers to the purported spread of “one-world” government under former President Barack Obama and argues that Bovino can usher in a “great restoration” of the country. [...] Bovino retired after much of the country turned against Trump’s immigration goons, and he was reassigned within the agency. Since then, he complained to podcaster and conspiracy theorist Lauren Witzke that “our culture is at stake”—a common white supremacist talking point.

Bovino also traveled to Europe in May, where he met up with the leaders of some right-wing extremist movements, including Germany’s Alternative for Germany and Spain’s Vox. 

“I am very happy to come over and lend some expertise to the Europeans [to tackle] illegal aliens destroying European culture,” he said, citing Nazi General Erwin Rommel as an inspirational figure. The Republican Party has increasingly tied itself to the white supremacist movement through continued support of Trump and the rising influence of figures like conservative podcaster and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.  Bovino considering a 2028 presidential bid shows that the party—and the wider conservative movement—isn’t moderating at all.

White nationalist Gregory Bovino throws his hat into the 2028 GOP ring to tout his maximalist and extreme anti-immigration policies.

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