I would really like a factual answer. It seems to me that the level of activity from President Trump has increased in the last couple of weeks, since that book came out.
He seems to be in the news more. He seems to be displaying more energy.
Or am I just noticing more?
worse in what way?
Maybe I ought not to have typed “worse” in the title. I am not trying to be very political here. I mean frantic or maybe frenzied. Moving and doing apparently for the sake of the activity itself. Is he doing more stuff of late? I am reading the book just now, and perhaps I am paying more attention.
My opinion: probably not. He was a psychopathic child when elected, as now. I have read though, that when he feels even more attacked than he usually feels, he gets more frenetic and tries to destroy even more beauty and goodness than in a normal day. So you may be on to something.
It comes in waves. He’ll spend a few weeks doing really crazy shit, then a few weeks laying low (relative to his peaks, I mean).
One of the great misfortunes is that election day happened to coincide with one of his troughs.
Careful observers have noticed that he’s clutching himself more and more during public appearances and especially in meetings that he is expected to lead or participate significantly in. Like most Presidents, he is certainly feeling the weight of the office and responsibilities entailed in it. However, all Presidents in modern history have had close advisors they could trust to lean on for counsel and support. Trump has attacked and alienated even his closest advisors and supporters (aside from family, who are sufficiently aware of his proclivities to not trust him), and he seems to spend much of his daily schedule in “Executive Time” watching cable news shows.
Insofar as it is difficult to say what is going on in anyone’s mind, Trump seems to be flailing to assert some semblance of control or authority, which has led to even more impulsive and erratic behavior than “normal”. Normal for Trump, of course, being batshit conspiranoiac crazy for any other President. Given an excuse to resign without having to admit to weakness, he’ll take it in a heartbeat. I’ll give even odds he doesn’t make it to December 31, 2018, even absent of something significant coming out of thr Mueller investigation.
Stranger
He is a shit-head from a shit-hole tower. He deserves any crap that will rains down on his head.
Yes, he seems to be getting worse. The Wolf book has his inner circle, especially Bannon, saying he is a clueless idiot on the record. He tried to refute the book saying he is a “stable genius.”
Yesterday he had a televised meeting with members of Congress to demonstrate that he is on top of things. During the meeting it becomes clear he doesn’t understand what a “clean bill” is. Says he will sign anything both side to agree to, and contradicts himself several times. The meeting demonstrates he is a clueless idiot.
Today he started off the morning tweeting against a surveillance bill his administration is for. He claimed to the WSJ that he has a relationship with Kim Jong Il. And finally bashed “shithole countries.”
He is careening from self-created disaster to disaster. If they took away his Twitter and kept him scripted via teleprompters he could stabilize things. But his staff have no control over him. This will not end well.
Exactly.
It may appear that he is more active lately, as he took a well deserved break from his four hour workdays over the holiday season.
A clueless idiot who is also going senile. The only thing that Trump could ever do was put on a dog-and-pony show, and now he can’t even do that, except when he is in a rally of his cult followers. His advancing senility is probably aggravated by the stress of knowing that his past financial dealings could soon be exposed.
Do you feel like you’ve found that here?
I would have hoped there was some sort of numerical metric of tweets-per-fortnight or miles-flown-per-speech but I appreciate the thoughts of others.
Alzheimer’s ?
Seriously, his behavior does seem to be becoming even more erratic.
Yes, it’s hard to come up with a reasonably objective metric for “getting worse” in this context.
But if he is, it’s not surprising. He came from an environment where he was in control of everything, he could get anything he wanted, and anyone who crossed him could be fired, intimidated or bought off. Now he’s subject to constant negative comments he can’t stem, forced to deal with a Congress he can’t fire or order around, surrounded by unreliable and incompetent cronies and family members he can’t trust, and the focus of a very serious investigation which could bring him, his businesses and his reputation crashing down that he can’t stop. Even a normally self-confident person would crack under those conditions and Trump was incredibly insecure to begin with.
Add to that his questionable physical health and I’d be surprised if he weren’t “getting worse”, even without any speculation about Alzheimers.
With “shithole countries” he’s reached a new low. Which he does weekly.
How low can he go?
While he was already famous and a big name before politics, he was not a household name. What Donald Trump did in business didn’t affect everyday life. Also it’s well known that for very wealthy people it is hard to make friends because…who can you trust? Trump has been in a position of privilege since his youth and his character certainly made it much more difficult to have relationships to give him something else in life. This is a man who besides his immediate family and a few associates was lonely. He was not liked within the wealthy business circles and he was a figure of fun long before politics.
But that all said life was easy for him. He could have chosen to kick back for the rest of his life, lounging off the back of his business empire and used his celebrity to make tv appearances and dictate narratives. He was already doing it with birtherism and constantly sniping at the Obama administration but now he is is inexplicably the commander-in-chief - he feels the heat and can’t take it. He’s made promises he knows he will never deliver.
He is now damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. The majority of Americans disapprove of him. If he builds the wall that will only get bigger. If he doesn’t his own base will desert him.
Trump is famously thin-skinned and short-fused. Everyday of his presidency is one step closer to his last and he knows he is failing and despised.
The only face-saving “out” would presumably be health concerns.
Yep, well said.
I think the book and the post-release chatter has touched a nerve. Above all else, Trump is a bullshit artist, and he has crafted an image of himself over the years as being a self-made billionaire business genius. Even when he loses, he wins. I mean he was smart enough to leverage his name and massive debt to keep his trademark and in turn leverage that into new stardom. And of course he was smart enough to use the tax code to write of untold losses. But his self-image is being smart. When the candid comments about his lack of intelligence came out -and more importantly, nobody credibly denying them - that touched a raw nerve with Donny. It’s all anyone has talked about for a week, and even though it’s not necessarily a scandal in and of itself, it’s been such a devastating wave of information that it threatens to frame his presidency in a way that many of his scandals haven’t.
One of the most jarring aspects of this book isn’t just the sheer magnitude of damaging information, but also the fact that Donny now knows that all of his ‘trusted’ advisors are probably demeaning him behind his back. He can deny it all he wants, but he knows that people are snickering about the size of his hands, brains, and weenie behind his back, and he’s reminded of it every time he has any interaction with any of them.
The danger here is that Donny starts cutting off even the people who are closest to him out of spite. The danger is that he stops talking even to his inner circle, and we’re already seeing some glimpses that this might be happening. Consider how he perplexed his own staff and congressional allies with his tweets on FISA. Consider now his abrupt end to the DACA deal. Donny’s clearly isolating himself and simultaneously taking out his frustrations on ‘the swamp’ by being doubly difficult to deal with.
Reading this thread, I thought “Shit hole countries” was an hyperbole. So I Googled it. Just SMDH. 