What Comes Next?

 Let's assume that every indicator is right and Democrats win control of both Houses of Congress - and that the new Congress is seated. I think that happens, but I can't say with 100% certainty of anything anymore.

We have a Trump Administration that has been engaged in a smash-and-grab campaign of thuggishness and graft. What's more is that Trump is already crashing out. What will he do if faced with a hostile Congress? 

Trump is mentally unwell. Yes, he is not intelligent AND suffering age-related cognitive decline. Yes, he's an example of what happens to the emperor when no one says, "no." However, the narcissistic wound that he might be about to receive is potentially mortifying.

Trump was not greatly restrained during his first term, but he was mostly constrained. Now, he's surrounded by so many toadies and creatures feeding his id, that the potential for intentional harm is very real.

Not Sending Their Best

 Today, we have two stories of incompetence rising and crashing down among the grifters, clowns and incompetents that populate Trumpistan.

We have Kimberly Guilfoyle - shape shifting gargoyle that dated both Gavin Newsom and Don Junior - resigning as Ambassador to Greece because she got caught soliciting bribes. Was Guilfoyle qualified to be ambassador to Greece? Of course not. Was she corrupt? Naturally. Was she more corrupt than Trump? Heavens no. What was her sin? Getting caught.

Meanwhile we have a truly WTF moment featuring new Blonde Chatbot Katie Zacharia. Marshall's piece digs into her likely false claims about being a lawyer in China (China?) but the real story is that she gives off the Ms South Carolina vibes of someone whose personality comes from her hair dye. This is the official press secretary of the fucking White House. She seems largely incapable of reading her cue cards. Saturday Night Live should just quit, if this is the reality we live in.

We have levels of incompetence riddling our governing institutions. I have no idea what a Democratic House and Senate can do to stem the dismal tide of so much stupidity and greed.

Treason On The Cheap

 Trump's "deal" with Putin to buy Russian diesel so he can look like he's saving truckers and farmers does not, in fact, save truckers and farmers. The 300,000 tons number that Trump negotiated is about half a day's worth of US diesel consumption. As Krugman notes, it SOUNDS like a big number that he can boast about at his self-soothing rallies, but it's not really a big enough number to bring prices down.

So, Trump has broken the law and engaged in light treason for no substantive benefit to the US economy.  ART OF THE DEAL!!!!!

Madness

 Richardson runs through Trump's deranged spewings on social media and at one of his rallies. It's really unhinged stuff, even for him. Some of this - obviously inviting Iran to nuke LA and San Diego - are his febrile mind doing his outrage schtick. However, we have some evidence that some of his social media posts are by Stephen Cheung and Natalie Harp. The White House support staff might be mimicking Trump's outrages, because they, too, are trapped in the downward spiral of Trump's unpopularity. 

In order to serve Trump, you have to serve his festering id. You warp yourself into his image. That's true of his staff, his Cabinet and the Republican Party writ large. As he decompresses, the GOP will decompress with him. They will echo his outrageous claims. They will double down on his absurd allegations. Unless someone finally breaks with him (and survives politically) the feverish madness within the GOP will not break. 

For this reason, I am optimistic that this "charisma" of Trump's will not be transferable to any of his heirs. Trump is no longer the insult king of 2016. His insults are cruder both in dignity and structure. He doesn't have the same juice. He's a tired old man, and he has to rely on the memories of the more agile (if still crude and cruel) man of his run in 2016. 

Let's say - hypothetically - that Trump has a health issue before Election Day. He's in the hospital. There is no reason to think that his minions won't try and continue his efforts to sabotage and destroy electoral democracy in this country. The question is: Is the entire GOP so far gone as to support that?

Time

 Donald Trump have an interview with Time. It is unhinged. As he gallops full speed ahead with his dismantling of the Constitutional order and the  Pax Americana, his cognitive and psychological collapse is not just a story that the media isn't covering, but a grave threat to the future of the country and the world.

The Baltics are trying to prepare to hold off a potential Russian invasion without knowing for sure if the US will show up. AI is inflating into a bubble - a bubble that seems to be the only thing sustaining what meager economic growth we still have. 

The real issues though remain Trump's malignant narcissism that prevents him from admitting any defeat or setback and the fact that he's clearly slipping into senility. Read his interviews from 2016. They ain't Cicero, but they are coherent. The shit he vomits out today is just rank nonsense. He can't sustain an idea for more than a moment, unless it's his stupid fucking vanity projects.

This is what the 25th Amendment is for, but it's actually harder to pull off than impeachment and removal. Especially with the sycophants that cloister around Trump's fantasy world.

Erratic and deranged, what will this malevolent force do to America before the election in a month?

Debtor's Prison

 David Frum - a conservative conservative, not a Republican/Trump conservative - make the case that among the myriad crisis brought by Trump and the GOP, the looming issue of debt is perhaps the most critical. Trump - who made a living off declaring bankruptcy - seems to want to do the same with the United States. The result would be catastrophic, but hey, why should we worry that Trump would do something stupid and self-destructive.

The rise in interest rates are going to hit everyone. This is...bad, and the next Democratic President will have to be a Bill Clinton-type who can extricate us from this disaster and then reap no goodwill for doing so until his presidency is over.

Life Expectancy

 Paul Campos gives us an update on Trump's actuarial odds. Basically, as a rich guy with long-lived parents, Trump can expect many more years. Of course, actuarial tables are just statistical approximations of predictions. Trump certainly doesn't look or sound healthy. Being president is the most stressful job on earth. One commentator said that while it's stressful, Trump doesn't actually DO the job. I don't think that's quite right. Trump doesn't engage with policy or it's effects - his diesel export ban is just pure Trumpist stupidity - but the stress of the job is the demands it put on you that cannot anticipate. In fact, all his little building projects are just a way for him to manage the stress; his ballroom is just an act of self-soothing. That doesn't mean it will work to reduce his stress/

The other stark reality is that Trump is in obvious cognitive decline from a pretty low pre-existing baseline. That does not mean he's about to die. There is certainly a likely future of Trump having the sort of health incident that an 80 year old man who eats fast food, is morbidly obese, who gobbles aspirin like they're candy and does have a stressful job where he suffers accumulating narcissistic wounds would be expected to have. A post-stroke or heart attack Trump should be removed via the 25th Amendment, but that would requite a GOP Congress that isn't in the thrall of the man.

When Woodrow Wilson had his stroke, his wife and staff basically took over the running of the government for weeks. I am not confident in the nest of snakes in the Executive Branch pulling off something similar. Instead, I think we might be in for something akin to the morbid puppetry of Mitch McConnell's "return" to the Senate. 

Deranged Trump Syndrome

 Krugman was famously called "shrill" for his warnings about - I believe - the Iraq war. Today, I'm sure there are still people who think he's shrill, and apparently that includes the editors of the NY Times who fired him.

Today, I'm sure there are those who have found him shrill and alarmist when he talks about Trump. Yglesias is an example of someone who will concede that Trump is really bad, but not that he is dangerously bad, even insane. Krugman isn't afraid to call Trump deranged, because he's not afraid of being "shrill."

There are two problems with treating Trump as a normal political phenomenon. The first is that Trump has always been a dictatorial dick. He was somewhat restrained in those impulses his first time through, but now he has the GOP so cowed that he has been able to shit all over the Constitution. 

The second is that he is so surrounded by sycophants that he's unable to relate to reality in a meaningful way. The more bad news he gets about his personal status, the more unhinged he becomes.