More Narcissistic Idiocy From Trump On Truth Social

Donald Trump is presiding over an economy that gets worse for most Americans every day and a war he doesn't seem to be able to end. But instead of trying to fix either, he is engaging in posting idiotic and narcissistic images of himself on Truth Social. Does he really think this is what the voters want to see?

Here, from mediate.com, are the latest images:

Trump Said His Ballroom Wouldn't Affect The White House - He LIED

Donald Trump's narcissism is out of control (or is it dementia). He decided, without congressional or public approval, that he wanted a monument to himself. He decided it would be a huge ballroom named after himself.

When he announced it, he said it would not affect any of the current White House. It would sit next to the East Wing of the White House. HE LIED! Now we learn that he increased to size of the proposed ballroom from a 600 person capacity to a capacity of over 900. And to accommodate the larger version, the East Wing of the White House would have to go.

Without seeking permission (and in secret), he began the demolition of the entire East Wing. We should not have believed his initial promise. We know he lies repeatedly and has no problem with breaking promises - and as Andy Borowitz points out, Trump and his family have a history of breaking promises and destroying beloved landmarks:

Trump learned everything he knows about real estate from his father, Fred Trump—and much of what he knows about wanton vandalism. Steeplechase Park was one of the most beloved amusement parks in Coney Island, Brooklyn. In 1966, after Trump’s dad acquired the property (accompanied by nineteen-year-old Donald at the signing ceremony), with plans to demolish it and build residential units, outraged citizens attempted to save it by applying to have it designated as a landmark.

Before Steeplechase’s landmark status could be certified, however, Fred Trump organized a “demolition party” at which he urged a mob to smash the glass facade of the park’s Pavilion of Fun. “Trump sent out engraved invitations and invited people to throw rocks and bricks through the Funny Face—it was a desecration of an icon, it was insane,” Charles Denson, the Coney Island History Project’s executive director, told the Brooklyn Paper. “Most developers are worried about making a profit, most wouldn’t throw a party to desecrate a stained-glass window.”

Donald Trump would continue his father’s proud tradition of gleeful destruction when he demolished the Bonwit Teller Building on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue to clear the site for Trump Tower. After saying he’d try to preserve the building’s priceless Art Deco friezes so that they could be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Trump discovered that it would cost $32,000 to remove them intact. As a clever solution to his problem, he had his workmen smash them to bits.

The trashing of the Bonwit friezes, as reprehensible as it was, is nothing compared to Trump’s most ambitious act of architectural desecration: the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. According to a report by the General Accounting Office, the January 6 assault resulted in property damage totaling $2.7 billion, a cost to be borne by American taxpayers.

Trump is just following a family tradition of lying and destruction. And he has done it to feed his own ego by building a huge (and probably crass) monument to himself. A monument nearly twice as large as the rest of the White House. The ballroom will be 90,000 square feet, while the rest of the White House is only 55,000 square feet. 

This is worse than a disgrace - it is a sacrilege!

The Ultimate Narcissism: Trump Authorizes A $1 Coin With His Own Image

The following is part of an article by Heather Digby Parton at Salon.com: 

Contrary to popular belief, Julius Caesar was not the first living leader to put his portrait on a coin. A couple of others beat him to it, including Persia’s Darius the Great. But the Roman emperor was the first to break with tradition and distribute them to ensure his subjects understood that he possessed absolute power and, not incidentally, controlled the empire’s money supply. It was a savvy move, copied by monarchs and dictators across the world ever since. 

America has long followed suit, featuring the faces of our leaders on our currency, but with an important caveat: They had to be long out of power and in their graves. No monarchy or dictatorship for us; we were hostile to the idea of minting the portrait of a living leader for the very reason Caesar thought it was such a clever idea. Our Constitution meant to ensure that no one person in American life would ever have sole unlimited power. 

In 1877, Congress even passed a law prohibiting it, which says that “only the portrait of deceased individuals may occur on the United States currency and securities.” Even coins that will be minted for the 250th anniversary of the nation have a special section in the code which states, “No coin issued under this subsection may bear the image of a living former or current President, or of any deceased former President during the 2-year period following the date of the death of that President.”

But that was before we had our own Orange Caesar, who believes he can rule by fiat, supported by Republicans in Congress, and then allow the Supreme Court to sort it out, usually in his favor. 

On Oct. 3 it was reported that the Treasury has designed and prepared to mint a new $1 coin with President Donald Trump’s face in honor of the country’s 250th celebration in 2026. The founders would be so proud to know that we made it that far before we finally succumbed to tyranny.

The front of the coin will feature Trump in profile, with his trademark 1967 Las Vegas lounge act hairstyle delineated in fine detail. The back will depict the famous fist pump pose from his 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, along with the words “fight, fight, fight.” 

When images of the new coin were shared on X, U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach replied, “No fake news here. These first drafts honoring America’s 250th Birthday and @POTUSare real. Looking forward to sharing more soon, once the obstructionist shutdown of the United States government is over.” In true Trumpist fashion, there is every reason to believe the administration will go ahead and mint the coins. By the time it’s litigated, the money will already be in circulation — and that will be that.

This is hardly the most important example from the lengthy list of Trump’s abuses of power. But symbols matter, and this one cuts to the very heart of who he is — and what he fancies himself to be. An emperor or king who rules not by the consent of the governed, but by divine right. . . .

This much is clear: The president has no respect for the American anti-monarchical tradition and style, and he seems to lack any real understanding that it’s our fundamental reason for being. 

Sinema Has Changed - From Progressive To Narcissist

Senator Sinema of Arizona has abandoned the Democratic Party, and now calls herself an Independent. In doing so, she's says she has not changed. That's not really true. She was elected as a progressive, but has governed as a corporate shill. But in one way she has not changed -- she seems to care only about herself.

The following is part of an op-ed on Sinema by Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times:

In the self-congratulatory video that Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona made to announce that she was leaving the Democratic Party and becoming an independent, she didn’t mention any disagreements with her former caucus about issues. Instead, she framed the move as a step toward self-actualization. “Registering as an independent, and showing up to work with the title of independent, is a reflection of who I’ve always been,” she said.

It’s true: This is who she’s always been. The content of Sinema’s politics has changed over time, from Green Party progressivism to pro-corporate centrism. Her approach to elected office as a vehicle for the refinement of the self has not. . . .

Until recently, Sinema has seemed to delight in the power an evenly split Senate gave her, which she used to benefit the financial and pharmaceutical industries. Negotiating the Inflation Reduction Act, she single-handedly stopped Democrats from closing the carried interest loophole, a provision that significantly cuts the tax bills of Wall Street investors. And Sinema insisted on narrowing the part of the law meant to bring down prescription drug prices, earning criticism even from Joe Manchin, the centrist West Virginia Democrat with whom she is frequently aligned.

“One of her deep flaws is that she doesn’t realize our actions have impacts every day on people who need our help,” said Ruben Gallego, a Democratic Arizona congressman who’d been considering a primary campaign against Sinema.

For much of this year, Sinema appeared to be preparing for a future in a Senate run by the Republican Mitch McConnell. In September, at a cozy appearance with McConnell in Kentucky, she said, “As you all know, control changes between the House and the Senate every couple of years. It’s likely to change again in just a few weeks.” She described McConnell as a friend, and he praised her as the “most effective first-term senator” he’d seen in his career.

Had Republicans won the Senate, Sinema could have become an independent who caucused with Republicans, preserving her place in the majority. A red wave might have seemed to vindicate her aggressive centrism, especially if Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat far more loyal to his party, had lost. But Kelly won and Democrats picked up a Senate seat. That meant Sinema could no longer hold the rest of the Democratic caucus hostage, or argue that only Democrats who defy their base are electable in her state. She was about to become a lot less relevant. Now she’s center stage again.

For the immediate future, Sinema’s move is unlikely to have major national political consequences. She has refused to directly say whether she will caucus with the Democrats. Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper, she shrugged off a question about the balance of power in the Senate, saying, “That’s kind of a D.C. thing to worry about.” Her answer was an insult to all the Arizonans who care very much which party controls the Senate, but it was also a deflection. Sinema ruled out caucusing with Republicans and said she intends to keep her committee assignments, which she can do only by aligning with Democrats. However much she values her own uniqueness, there are no parties of one in the Senate.

The real significance of her defection will come in 2024, when she is up for re-election. Had she remained a Democrat, Gallego could have been a strong primary challenger. Many of those who supported Sinema four years ago have been enraged by the way she’s obstructed popular liberal priorities, and a recent AARP poll found that only 37 percent of likely Democratic voters in Arizona had a positive opinion of her.

It will be harder for Democrats to challenge her in a general election, where a three-way race would risk a Republican victory. But Gallego, who said he will decide on running next year, insisted that the threat of Sinema acting as a spoiler won’t shape his decision. “No matter what, I’m not going to base my decision off this false threat that she’s trying to put on,” he said, arguing that she doesn’t have enough support “to put together a coalition that will affect the Democratic nominee.”

That might be too optimistic — Sinema wouldn’t need to get that many swing voters to thwart a Democrat. But he’s right that she doesn’t have a winning coalition herself. In the AARP poll, a decisive majority of voters in every demographic group, including independents, viewed her unfavorably. It’s one thing to be independent on behalf of your voters. It’s another to be independent from them.

The Real Reason Manchin/Sinema Killed Voting Rights Bill

 

On Wednesday, Senators Manchin and Sinema voted to protect the filibuster -- effectively killing the Voting Rights Bill. Why did they do that. They said it was to promote bipartisanship in the Senate, but they have to know that there is no bipartisanship in the current Senate. Some are saying it's to keep the corporate donors pumping money into their campaign coffers. But there may be an even more important reason. Robert Reich gives us that reason. I think he may be right. Here's some of what he had to say:

What can possibly explain Manchin’s and Sinema’s votes against voting rights this week? Why did they create a false narrative that the legislation had to be “bipartisan” when everyone -- themselves included -- knew bipartisanship was impossible? Why did they say they couldn’t support changing the filibuster rules when only last monththey voted for an exception to the filibuster that allowed debt ceiling legislation to pass with only Democratic votes? Why did they co-sponsor voting rights legislation and then vote to kill the very same legislation? Why did Manchin vote for the “talking filibuster” in 2011 yet vote against it now?

I’ve suggested that the answer to all these questions could be found in the giant wads of corporate cash flowing into their campaign coffers. But as I’ve watched the two senators closely and spoken about them with members of Congress as well as Hill staff, I’ve come to the conclusion this isn’t it – or at least not all of it.

The corporate money explanation leaves out the single biggest factor affecting almost all national politicians I’ve dealt with: Big egos. Manchin’s and Sinema’s are now among the biggest.

Before February of last year, almost no one outside West Virginia had ever heard of Joe Manchin, and almost no one outside of Arizona (and probably few within the state) had ever heard of Kyrsten Sinema. Now, they’re notorious. They’re Washington celebrities. Their photos grace every major news outlet in America.

This sort of attention is addictive. Once it seeps into the bloodstream, it becomes an all-consuming force. I’ve known politicians who have become permanently and irrevocably intoxicated by it.

I’m not talking simply about power, although that’s certainly part of it. I’m talking about narcissism – the primal force driving so much of modern America, but whose essence is concentrated in certain places such as Wall Street, Hollywood, and the United States Senate.

Once addicted, the pathologically narcissistic politician can become petty in the extreme, taking every slight as a deep personal insult. I’m told that Manchin asked Biden’s staff not to blame him for the delay of “Build Back Better,” and was then infuriated when Biden suggested Manchin bore some of the responsibility. “You want to understand why Manchin stabbed Biden in the back on voting rights?” one House member told me this week. “It’s because he’s so pissed off at Ron Klain [Biden’s chief of staff].”

Paradoxically, a large enough slight played out on the national stage can also enthrall a pathologically narcissistic politician. Several people on the Hill who have watched Sinema at close range since she became a senator tell me she relished all the negative attention she got when she gave her very theatrical thumbs down to increasing the minimum wage, and since then has thrilled at her burgeoning role as a spoiler. . . .

Not all senators are egomaniacs, of course. I had the good fortune to work closely with the late Paul Wellstone, who was always eager to give others credit while being the first to take any blame. I know several now serving who have their egos firmly in check — including Mark Kelly, Raphael Warnock, Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. Most of the rest lie on an ego spectrum ranging from inflated to pathological.

Manchin and Sinema are near the extreme. As I said, neither had much national attention prior to the last February. But once they got a taste of the national spotlight, they couldn’t let go. They must have figured that the only way they could keep the spotlight focused on themselves was by threatening to do what they finally did this week — shafting American democracy.

All Of Trump's Actions Are Just To Feed His Huge Ego

Presidents in the past have generally tried to do what they thought was best for this country. They have not always been right, and some of their actions did not accomplish that goal, but they thought they were helping Americans.

Donald Trump is different. He doesn't care what is good for the country or its citizens. He only cares about himself, and every action he has taken has been to feed his own inflated ego. He does only what he thinks will make him look good, regardless of what it does to the country.

Here is just a part of how Max Boot describes this in The Washington Post:

Politics at its highest level has always been a realm of healthy egos — and of personal ambitions cloaked as public needs. Yet even the most driven politicians usually recognize the need to serve — or at least appear to serve — some cause greater than their own self-interest. There are few profiles in courage, but even politicians who act out of sheer expediency are usually troubled by occasional pangs of guilt.

President Trump is therefore a unique, or at least very unusual, specimen of homo politicus. He shows no sign of being aware of any interest that he should serve other than his own. Doing the right thing, for him, is simply doing whatever he thinks will benefit him the most. As Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry said in a conversation secretly recorded by her niece, Mary L. Trump, “He has no principles. … Donald is out for Donald, period.” The president’s picture should appear in the dictionary under the word “solipsism”; he is the Platonic ideal of the type.

Former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his memoir: “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations.” . . .

If there are limits to what Trump will do in service to his own ego, we have not discovered them. He will, as the Senate Intelligence Committee just confirmed, eagerly accept election help from Russia. He will try to blackmail Ukraine into helping him politically. He will urge a boycott of Goodyear — a company that employees 63,000 Americans — because a slide show counseled its employees not to sport “MAGA attire” at work. He will subject millions of Americans to delayed mail deliveries — resulting in dead chicks and missing checks — to prevent anti-Trump voters from casting ballots by mail. He will even push — according to the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security — for the federal government to stop giving emergency aid to help California battle wildfires because that state did not support him.

What makes Trump truly extraordinary is not just that he acts so unethically. It is that he is so open about it, because he can’t conceive there would be anything wrong with anything he does to help himself.

Thus he admitted that he is starving the Postal Service of funds because “that means they can’t have universal mail-in voting.” He will keep insisting until the day he dies that his phone call with Ukraine’s president was “perfect” because what’s wrong with using military aid to promote his own campaign? And of course he calls accusations of collusion between his campaign and Russia a “hoax” — he clearly doesn’t see anything scandalous about inviting foreign election interference on his behalf. He so often says the quiet part out loud, because he doesn’t know that what he’s saying is wrong.

That makes him a uniquely dangerous president: a man with no principles — save the imperative of self-promotion — but with the awesome power of the federal government at his command.

Trump Views National Problems As Personal Attacks On Him

Our nation is in crisis. The Coronavirus pandemic is worse than in any other country, racism is exhibiting itself in our police departments and other institutions, and the economy is in a deep recession leaving many millions of workers without jobs.

In times like this, past presidents have stepped up and shown the leadership necessary to bring the country together to overcome the problems. Sadly, we now have a president who is incapable of doing that. His rampant narcissism prevents him from even recognizing the country has problems. For him, the country's problems are just personal attacks on him.

Here is part of how Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker, and Josh Dawsey describe Trump's narcissistic problem in The Washington Post:

Callers on President Trump in recent weeks have come to expect what several allies and advisers describe as a “woe-is-me” preamble.

The president rants about the deadly coronavirus destroying “the greatest economy,” one he claims to have personally built. He laments the unfair “fake news” media, which he vents never gives him any credit. And he bemoans the “sick, twisted” police officers in Minneapolis, whose killing of an unarmed black man in their custody provoked the nationwide racial justice protests that have confounded the president.

Gone, say these advisers and confidants, many speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations, are the usual pleasantries and greetings.

Instead, Trump often launches into a monologue placing himself at the center of the nation’s turmoil. The president has cast himself in the starring role of the blameless victim — of a deadly pandemic, of a stalled economy, of deep-seated racial unrest, all of which happened to him rather than the country.

Trump put his self-victimization on public display Thursday in response to a Supreme Court ruling rejecting his claim of absolute immunity and permitting a New York prosecutor to see the president’s private and business financial records.

Trump reacted with a social media meltdown, writing on Twitter, “PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!” and “POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” He wrote that the decision was “Not fair to this Presidency” and claimed that “Courts in the past have given ’broad deference’. BUT NOT ME!”

Trump has always exhibited a healthy ego and his self-victimization tendencies are not a new phenomenon, according to those who have known him over the years. But those characteristics have been especially pronounced this summer, revealing themselves almost daily in everything from private conversations to public tweets as the pandemic continues to upend daily life across America and threaten the president’s political fortunes. . . .

Now, however, Trump’s sense of victimhood strikes even some allies as particularly incongruous considering the devastation wrought by the pandemic and the pain and anguish apparent in Black Lives Matter protests.

More than 130,000 Americans so far have died of the novel coronavirus, with more than 3 million cases reported. Nearly 43 million Americans — more than a quarter of the labor force — have filed for unemployment benefits since the pandemic began. And the nation is riven not just by protests following the death of George Floyd, the unarmed black man killed in Minneapolis police custody, but also by a president who has deliberately stoked racial animus.

Even those in Trump’s orbit are trying to nudge him toward a sunnier, less egocentric approach to the crises he is facing, fearing that his sullen demeanor could backfire politically. . . .

To some of his longtime advisers, the president has seemed tired, low-energy and lacking the passion and energy that defined him when he was a candidate during the 2016 race. Aides noticed he largely read his script at Mount Rushmore and did not veer off the teleprompters for high-energy riffs like he usually does when delivering political speeches.

He has been spending an inordinate amount of time watching television news and has been scrambling for ways to fire up his base and keep his loyalists supportive, with little in the way of a set daily schedule.

“Every guy that talks to him, the first half of the conversation is, ‘Woe is me,’ ” said one of the outside operatives, speaking anonymously to share private details. “They’re all saying, ‘You’ve got to snap out of it. You’re the president. Presidents are supposed to deal with crises.’ But he’s fixated.”

Trump Phone Calls To Other Leaders Alarmed Officials

We know that Trump's incompetence and narcissism has damaged the reputation of the United States in the world. But it is even worse than a loss of face. His behavior, especially on the phone to other world leaders, has made the world a much more dangerous place -- and it even alarmed officials in his own administration.

Here is part of how Carl Bernstein reports it at CNN.com:

In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.

The calls caused former top Trump deputies -- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials -- to conclude that the President was often "delusional," as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest.

These officials' concerns about the calls, and particularly Trump's deference to Putin, take on new resonance with reports the President may have learned in March that Russia had offered the Taliban bounties to kill US troops in Afghanistan -- and yet took no action. CNN's sources said there were calls between Putin and Trump about Trump's desire to end the American military presence in Afghanistan but they mentioned no discussion of the supposed Taliban bounties.

By far the greatest number of Trump's telephone discussions with an individual head of state were with Erdogan, who sometimes phoned the White House at least twice a week and was put through directly to the President on standing orders from Trump, according to the sources. Meanwhile, the President regularly bullied and demeaned the leaders of America's principal allies, especially two women: telling Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom she was weak and lacked courage; and telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was "stupid."

Trump incessantly boasted to his fellow heads of state, including Saudi Arabia's autocratic royal heir Mohammed bin Salman and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, about his own wealth, genius, "great" accomplishments as President, and the "idiocy" of his Oval Office predecessors, according to the sources.

In his conversations with both Putin and Erdogan, Trump took special delight in trashing former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and suggested that dealing directly with him -- Trump -- would be far more fruitful than during previous administrations. "They didn't know BS," he said of Bush and Obama -- one of several derisive tropes the sources said he favored when discussing his predecessors with the Turkish and Russian leaders. . . .

One person familiar with almost all the conversations with the leaders of Russia, Turkey, Canada, Australia and western Europe described the calls cumulatively as 'abominations' so grievous to US national security interests that if members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President.

The insidious effect of the conversations comes from Trump's tone, his raging outbursts at allies while fawning over authoritarian strongmen, his ignorance of history and lack of preparation as much as it does from the troubling substance, according to the sources. While in office, then- Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats expressed worry to subordinates that Trump's telephone discussions were undermining the coherent conduct of foreign relations and American objectives around the globe, one of CNN's sources said. And in recent weeks, former chief of staff Kelly has mentioned the damaging impact of the President's calls on US national security to several individuals in private.

Two sources compared many of the President's conversations with foreign leaders to Trump's recent press "briefings" on the coronavirus pandemic: free form, fact-deficient stream-of-consciousness ramblings, full of fantasy and off-the-wall pronouncements based on his intuitions, guesswork, the opinions of Fox News TV hosts and social media misinformation. . . .

In his phone exchanges with Putin, the sources reported, the President talked mostly about himself, frequently in over-the-top, self-aggrandizing terms: touting his "unprecedented" success in building the US economy; asserting in derisive language how much smarter and "stronger" he is than "the imbeciles" and "weaklings" who came before him in the presidency (especially Obama); reveling in his experience running the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, and obsequiously courting Putin's admiration and approval. Putin "just outplays" him, said a high-level administration official -- comparing the Russian leader to a chess grandmaster and Trump to an occasional player of checkers. While Putin "destabilizes the West," said this source, the President of the United States "sits there and thinks he can build himself up enough as a businessman and tough guy that Putin will respect him.". . .

Almost never, according to CNN's sources, would Trump read the briefing materials prepared for him by the CIA and NSC staff in advance of his calls with heads of state. . . .

The common, overwhelming dynamic that characterizes Trump's conversations with both authoritarian dictators and leaders of the world's greatest democracies is his consistent assertion of himself as the defining subject and subtext of the calls -- almost never the United States and its historic place and leadership in the world, according to sources intimately familiar with the calls. . . .

"There was no sense of 'Team America' in the conversations," or of the United States as an historic force with certain democratic principles and leadership of the free world, said the official. "The opposite. It was like the United States had disappeared. It was always 'Just me'."

Trump Praises Acosta - Then Throws Him Under The Bus

Let me preface my remarks by saying I am happy that Alex Acosta is no longer drawing a paycheck from the American taxpayers. He was a weak federal prosecutor (bending to the will of the rich and powerful over their victims) and he was an even worse Decretary of Labor (always siding with employers to the detriment of American workers).

But neither of those reasons mattered to Donald Trump. In fact, those were the reasons that Trump liked Acosta. Trump threw him under the bus anyway.

Make no mistake. What we saw in Trump and Acosta's appearance before reporters was nothing but political theater. Acosta did not resign of his own free will. Donald Trump fired him. And he fired him because he was throwing bad publicity on Trump (who was once close to Epstein and attended his parties with underage girls -- in spite of what he now claims). Trump knew his Epstein dilemma would continue as long as Acosta worked for him -- and Trump fervently wants this to go away (before it gets him in trouble).

Trump demands loyalty from those who work for him, but that loyalty is a one-way street. He does not return loyalty to those who give it to him. That's because Trump only cares about one person -- Donald Trump. Anyone who causes Trump to look bad (no matter how loyal they are) will be fired. And personally, I think that would even apply to his family.

It's a good thing Acosta was fired, but the reason for his firing was rather pathetic.

Trump's Not Fit To Lead The Most Powerful Nation On Earth

(The cartoon image above is from friendlystock.com.)

We know Donald Trump is a narcissist. That's not a good quality for a president to have, but if he had the ability to put that aside and run the country in a competent way, it could possibly work. Unfortunately, he doesn't have that ability.

Trump only cares about one thing -- himself.

We knew he wasn't competent when he assumed office. The hope was that he would spend his time listening to career officials and grow into the job. He hasn't even tried to do that. Intelligence officials have had to dumb down their daily briefings, because he doesn't have the interest or attention span to take in the knowledge he needs to do his job.

We now learn from former Secretary of State Tillerson that he went into a conference with Putin (leader of our most powerful enemy) unprepared (while Putin came very well prepared). This is dangerous stuff. We need our leader to be prepared when he meets other leaders -- especially our enemies.

But Trump won't spend the time or make the effort to be prepared on any subject, domestic for foreign. He spends most of his time watching TV and tweeting, and those efforts are aimed at only one thing -- trying to make himself look better.

He's so thin-skinned that he will refuse to meet with legislators to negotiate solutions to national problems, simply because he perceived something someone said as an insult to him. He can't get past the perceived insults and solve problems, because the only problem he sees is how he is being treated by the press or other politicians.

He flies by the seat of his pants (without preparation) -- doing whatever he thinks will make himself look good (and not what is best for the country). And this is the person who control our Armed Forces and has his finger of the nuclear button.

Trump is not fit to be president. The leaders of other nations have already realized that, and they no longer look to the U.S. for leadership. It's time the American people also realized it, and voted him out of office. We cannot afford to give someone as utterly incompetent as Trump another four years.

The Root Cause Of White House Chaos/Lies Is FEAR

(This caricature of Donald Trump is by DonkeyHotey.)

We know that the Trump White House is in chaos, and has been since the day he was sworn in. It is a place where the truth doesn't matter, and lying is actually encouraged.

Now, with the release of the Mueller Report, we also know that Trump repeatedly tried to obstruct justice by interfering with the investigation. He likes to say he was "exonerated", but that's just another lie. Mueller found plenty of evidence of Trump's obstruction, and the only reason Trump wasn't charged in because of the silly Justice Department policy that a sitting president can't be indicted.

Why does Trump constantly lie, and encourage his aides to do the same? It's FEAR. Trump is afraid that if the truth is known, then he will be viewed as an illegitimate president -- who won only because of collusion with Russia. And his rampant narcissism cannot take that.

Here is just part of what Maureen Dowd wrote on this subject in The New York Times:

After 675 days, more than 2,800 subpoenas, nearly 500 search warrants, $30 million spent, endless jaw-jaw on cable and countless whiny Trump tweets, we have come down to one fundamental truth.

And it’s the same truth that has been terrorizing us all along: Donald Trump’s dirtbag machinations are driven by insane vanity.

The First Narcissist’s all-consuming blend of braggadocio and insecurity has turned Washington and its rickety institutions into a dystopian outpost of his id.

President Trump obstructed on nearly every page of Volume II of the Mueller report, even though Robert Mueller was too lost in legalese to throw the book at him. The report counts as the Worst Exoneration Ever, replete with incrimination.

And Trump’s motivation for trying to subvert justice and turn the White House into a writhing nest of liars? His ego.

He did not want people to think that the Russians were responsible for his election and that he was an illegitimate president.

And why was this the burr under his sociopathic saddle? Obviously, because he thinks he is an illegitimate president. He never expected to win.

The idea that he is in the Oval Office under false pretenses plays into his twisted sense of victimhood. The spoiled scion of Fifth Avenue somehow always finds a way to be aggrieved, a victim of the media, the deep state, “dirty cops,” note-taking aides and the elites — all out to get him.

It’s the same reason he is still talking at rallies about that “beautiful map” of his Electoral College victory, with its large swaths of red. And the same reason he focuses on ratings and crowd sizes and subscription numbers and all the other puerile citations of his ego arithmetic.

We can’t know for sure if there is a more sinister reason for Trump’s obstruction because Mueller didn’t put him under the interrogation lights. The special counsel did not provide any insight into whether Vladimir Putin has something on him.

All we know for now is that Trump’s advisers, talking under oath to federal prosecutors, attributed his actions to his fear of being seen as illegitimate.

Trump's Toxic Narcissism Is A Danger To This Country

(Photo of Trump is from gistparkmedia.com.)

Much is made about the policies pursued by Donald Trump since he assumed office. One might be forgiven for thinking he actually has policies in which he deeply believes. But that would be wrong.

Trump has no real beliefs -- other than a belief that he is superior and smarter than anyone else. Everything he does is because of his narcissism. His only care is how things relate to him and how he is viewed.

Trump is not just a little bit narcissistic. His narcissism is a full-blown psychological problem. It is toxic and virulent, and it poses a significant danger to this country (and the world). It deserves more discussion than the policies it produces.

Here is just part of an excellent post by Amanda Ripley at medium.com:

I tried an experiment the other day. To make sense of Trump’s behavior, I did not call foreign policy experts or pundits. That would be like calling an astrologer to explain a flu pandemic. Instead, I called Wendy Behary, who wrote the book Disarming the Narcissist and has treated hundreds of narcissistic clients, including surgeons, Wall Street executives, and other powerful people, in her private practice in New Jersey. It was one of the most useful conversations I’ve had about Trump in months.

Unlike the Washington Post or the New York Times, Behary has never once been surprised by Trump’s behavior. “His behavior is not remarkable. It’s predictable. It’s exactly what we’d expect,” she says. “He just continues to be a consistent version of who he appears to be.”

So far, most of the mainstream stories about Trump’s narcissism have been about whether mental health professionals should diagnose him from afar. That’s a worthy debate. But journalists are not psychiatrists. We are not bound by the rules of the American Psychiatric Association. We are bound by a duty to inform the public, without fear, drawing upon any source that may prove useful.

At this point, it’s not biased to acknowledge that Trump behaves in ways that most mental health professionals recognize as symptomatic of a larger problem. It’s not unreasonable to ask them to help explain and even predict his behavior. In fact, it may be more biased not to do so.

What if we got new sources to help us through this “remarkable” time? This doesn’t mean bashing Trump. To the contrary. In order to treat her narcissistic clients, Behary has learned to empathize with them. This isn’t easy to do, she admits, but it is essential — so that she doesn’t mistake them for being strategic or simply evil. “Narcissists don’t set out to harm people,” she says. “They will harm you — but it’s to protect themselves. It’s not personal.” Taking narcissists personally is a very common waste of time and energy.

Narcissists, for example, need admiration the way addicts need substances. They believe they are truly special and yet not appreciated for their gifts, which can lead them to act entitled, as if the rules do not apply to them. In their quest for recognition, they sometimes exploit others, contradict what they’ve said, and break their promises — all the while arguing (and often truly believing) in their new, alternative facts. Once we know this, Trump’s tendency to revise history becomes unsurprising and explicable.

It’s a painful way to live, because no amount of adoration will ever be enough. After every victory, feelings of envy, anger, and frustration squirm back to the surface. Now, Behary says, Trump is “unraveling.” This, too, is predictable, which is why we need to talk about it, out in the open. As the bad news stacks up for Trump, including Republican losses in the midterms, a divided Congress, and continuing legal investigations, he is likely experiencing profound mental agony.

In this agitated state, narcissists are notoriously bad at negotiating, as it turns out. (They are good at bullying, which is not the same thing.) Catherine Conner, a family law attorney and mediator in Northern California, understands this better than political scientists, because she has helped hundreds of people craft child custody agreements and divorce settlements. A crisis, such as a divorce, may intensify narcissistic tendencies and make negotiation impossible, she says.

“The only way to create an agreement is to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and come up with a package that might appeal to both of you,” Conner says. “If they are incapable of seeing the world through anyone else’s eyes, they won’t be able to do this. They will just remain stuck on their vision of what should be, convinced that everyone will see it their way.”

This would explain why Trump was reportedly shocked that the Democrats did not agree to his border-wall terms. He was unable to see the situation from their point of view. When this kind of intransigence takes hold in Conner’s cases, the parties are sometimes forced to rely on judges to make the decision.

In Trump’s case, if he is unable to compromise before the government shuts down again in two weeks, the courts might have to get involved. Or Trump might just turn the government back on in order to be the hero. “Narcissists are so good at showing up as Messiahs,” Behary says. If he’s at risk of losing the support of his fan base, which he needs in order to stop the pain, he will swoop in to save the day. Because that’s what narcissists do.

Typically, when all else fails and narcissists are unable to get the attention and affirmation they need, they play the victim. If the investigations continue to intensify, and if Trump begins to lose the affection of his base, Fox News pundits, and Republican leaders, he may resign, Behary predicts, based on all the narcissists she has treated for decades. “He’ll point the finger and say, ‘I was making America great again, and the Democrats stopped me.’”