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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump Is Starting to Panic - By Frank Rich
Since the Democrats made gains in last weeks election and, in some places, may continue to make more still Donald Trump has retreated into what the Los Angeles Times calls a cocoon of bitterness and resentment, canceling travel plans, lashing out at allies and adversaries, meddling in the remaining undecided races and, apparently, sitting for hours of meetings with his personal lawyers. Should we take his tantrums as an early indicator of additional bad news?
I will make the reckless prediction that Donald Trump and good news are not fated to appear in the same sentence unless the good news happens to be that his presidency is ending. Everything about his behavior since the midterms suggests that even he has figured this out. It has belatedly dawned on him that (a) he lost the election he thought he won; (b) the Robert Mueller investigation has moved faster than his efforts to thwart it; (c) any of his legislative fantasies, notably the funding of his border wall, are doomed; and (d) and his pouting in Paris elevated his international image as a buffoon to a whole new level of notoriety. Remember when Republicans attacked Barack Obama (falsely) for allegedly barring Winston Churchills bust from the White House? Now the GOPs hero is a president whom Churchills own grandson, the Conservative member of Parliament Nicholas Soames, has labeled pathetic, inadequate, and not fit to represent this great country after Trump failed to show up at the French cemetery rites honoring the fallen of World War I.
That all this makes Trump panic at some gut level is visible not merely in his widely reported spells of rage and bitterness and in his increasingly empty official schedule. He is also stepping up his already impressive efforts to discredit and destroy those democratic institutions that might prevent him from escaping criminal jeopardy. And so he has returned to ridiculing the very lifeblood of America, the electoral process, by declaring elections that dont go his way a fraud; he has escalated his assault on a free press by barring a CNN reporter and trying to frame him as a fellow misogynistic bully with a deceptively edited video; and, last but not least, he has appointed an acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, who has ridiculed the judicial system, been on the board of a fly-by-night company that practiced Trump Universitystyle consumer frauds, and publicly attacked the Mueller probe in Trumps own language.
This is bunker behavior. Only a desperate man would try to derail Mueller by installing this transparent reprobate at the Department of Justice. Even more revealing is how Trump has become more and more unhinged since making his Whitaker move. The growing fury, most manifest in his latest anti-Mueller tweetstorm this week, suggests that he already realizes that the ploy has backfired. It seems to be finally sinking in, perhaps under the frantic tutelage of his lawyers, that his fate and the fates of his son and son-in-law, among others in his immediate orbit, are tied to the fates of Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and all the other presidents men whose comprehensive narrative Mueller is bound to tell America no matter what Trump and his stooge at Justice do to try to foil or decapitate him.
MORE:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/frank-rich-trump-is-starting-to-panic.html
Botany
(72,155 posts)Just today he:
He said he is not sure if the Crown Prince of S. A. was a part in Khashoggi's murder, more crap
on the wall that will never be built, and he will get Nancy Pelosi the votes that she needs to be
Speaker of the House. And I didn't hear the whole thing Trump said something about they
are raking the leaves and brush wrong and that is part of California's fire problem.
And these weren't even his nut ball tweets.
At the end of WW II when Hitler retreated to his bunker where he was given cocaine and speed
to keep going, he was ordering phantom armies to attack the Russians, and he was looking at models
of how he was going to rebuild Berlin on to show the glory of the Third Reich. I might be wrong but
I think as Mueller is closing in Trump's mental acuity is slipping away.
underpants
(185,984 posts)He has to get some but it's like he just erases all of it. He probably thinks he just HAS to know better or more.
workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)warmfeet
(3,321 posts)workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)calimary
(83,812 posts)Fitting way to show trumps level of gravitas.
Cha
(304,047 posts)FakeNoose
(35,184 posts)In 1942 the German generals already knew they would lose the war. But any General who told Hitler the truth or said anything negative, got taken out and shot. So they all had to lie to him, meanwhile they made secret plans among themselves. Everybody lied to Hitler all the time because he was in this delusional world, and he had the power to make them lie to him.
In the US it's a little different. Cheeto is making the conscious decision to only listen to the people who agree with him. The other opinions - the TRUTH if you will - is completely available to him any time he wants to hear it. And yet he chooses to ignore it and disbelieve it.
Cheeto foolishly thinks he can make US disbelieve the truth, as long as HE disbelieves it. So this is different from the Hitler paranoia. Trump knows he's lying and bullshitting but he cannot stop himself.
mastermind
(229 posts)just like tiny likes to do.
Marcuse
(7,965 posts)FakeNoose
(35,184 posts)Great cartoon.
Jeffersons Ghost
(15,235 posts)iluvtennis
(20,656 posts)True Blue American
(18,124 posts)Last edited Sat Nov 17, 2018, 06:03 PM - Edit history (1)
He just blurts out any ignorant thought that crosses his mind. Thinking is not a part of Trump any more. He is just robotically spitting out words.
Like his comment to Scalias widow of the big family. You sure have been busy! What kind of nut would say that at a Medal of Honor ceremony?
It was clear he was visibly holding himself togather.
Texin
(2,627 posts)Botany
(72,155 posts).... whatever he was saying would be wrong. For my work sometimes I have been
around controlled burns and have been to lectures about them and the size and the
speed of California's fires are wild. The fires @ some places were moving 800 yds
per minute. With global climate change, California native shrubs (chaparral) that is
made to burn, and those fucking eucalyptus trees those brave and hard working
men and women fighting those fires have their handful.
If Trump really wanted to help he should send those troops he has wasting their time
on the border to California.
True Blue American
(18,124 posts)Instead of posing for another photo op that cost millions he could send those tripoops to help the Fire Fighters! Maybe they could rake leaves.
I have been on the Volunteer Fire Department to help the Firefighters, but any fool that knows the first thing about fires know they create breaks to try and stop wild firess.
Loge23
(3,922 posts)If the #IPOTUS refutes the CIA, after his term-long beef with the FBI, and blaming the Secret Service for his France debacle, he's putting himself into a very dangerous position.
I do not think for a minute that these professional organizations would compromise their integrity in letting their guard down, but these are human beings after all.
After a while, you do the job for the sake of the job; any personal motivation to take a bullet for this guy is gone.
Yes it is their job, but if I were the POTUS I would at least make an attempt to cultivate a positive relationship with these agencies.
Fritz Walter
(4,347 posts)Youve seen others where clever subtitles are superimposed over the scene of Hitlers final meltdown.
The time is right for a post-midterm adaptation. And please, dont pull any punchlines!
klook
(12,791 posts)Fritz Walter
(4,347 posts)klook
(12,791 posts)I confess, I can't get enough of these "Hitler Rants" parodies. I saw Downfall in the theater and loved it (although it was grueling), but I love these hilarious parodies. It's hard to believe the same actor (Bruno Ganz) played the melancholy hipster angel in Wings of Desire AND Hitler in Downfall! I think I read somewhere that he didn't mind the parodies, and in fact was somewhat amused by them. Nice!
Berlin Expat
(954 posts)to Hitlerian levels of delusion on Trump's part.
Hitler expected that SS General Felix Steiner would be able to launch a counterattack against the Red Army after the Red Army won the Battle of the Seelow Heights and advanced into Berlin itself.
Hitler built up a fantasy counterattack, in which the Red Army would be easily repelled and the day would be saved. However, Steiner was unable to do this and in some fairness to him, he properly assessed the situation and reported it to a Wehrmacht General, who in turn, reported that to Hans Krebs of the OKH.
Wikipedia sums it up better:
Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the huge salient created by the 1st Belorussian Front's breakout. Steiner's attack was due to coincide with General Busse's Ninth Army, attacking from the south in a pincer attack. The Ninth Army had been pushed to south of the 1st Belorussian Front's salient. To facilitate this attack, Steiner was assigned the three divisions of the Ninth Army's CI Army Corps: the 4th SS Panzergrenadier Division Polizei, the 5th Jäger Division, and the 25th Panzergrenadier Division. All three divisions were north of the Finow Canal on the Northern flank of Zhukov's salient. Weidling's LVI Panzer Corps, which was still east of Berlin with its northern flank just below Werneuchen, was also ordered to participate in the attack. The three divisions from CI Army Corps planned to attack south from Eberswalde on the Finow Canal towards the LVI Panzer Corps. The three divisions from CI Army Corps were 24 kilometres (about 15 miles) east of Berlin and the attack to the south would cut the 1st Belorussian Front's salient in two. Steiner called Heinrici and informed him that the plan could not be implemented because the 5th Jäger Division and the 25th Panzergrenadier Division were deployed defensively and could not be redeployed until the 2nd Naval Division arrived from the coast to relieve them. This left only two battalions of the 4th SS Panzergrenadier Division available and they had no combat weapons.
Based on Steiner's assessment, Heinrici called Hans Krebs, Chief of Staff of the German General Staff of the Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres or OKH), and told him that the plan could not be implemented. Heinrici asked to speak to Hitler, but was told Hitler was too busy to take his call. On 22 April 1945, at his afternoon conference, Hitler became aware that Steiner was not going to attack and he fell into a tearful rage. Hitler declared the war was lost, he blamed the generals and announced that he would stay on in Berlin until the end, then kill himself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Steiner#Battle_of_Berlin
Trumpocalypse
(6,143 posts)Hitler volunteered for the army. - Bill Maher.
olegramps
(8,200 posts)GoCubsGo
(32,847 posts)If what we've been seeing is just the early stages of panic, then I can't imagine what full-blown panic is going to look at.
marylandblue
(12,344 posts)dubyadiprecession
(6,205 posts)It a wonder, he hasn't concocted a plan to flip the house back in 2020 and still get himself re-elected.
That would be a tall order by itself, but the Mueller investigation coupled with future house subpoena's have snuffed the life out of him.
I can't imagine Trump turning this all around in two years.
UTUSN
(72,156 posts)Trumpocalypse
(6,143 posts)lying about Al Gore. He helped to give us Bush.
malaise
(276,960 posts)Everything about his behavior since the midterms suggests that even he has figured this out. It has belatedly dawned on him that (a) he lost the election he thought he won; (b) the Robert Mueller investigation has moved faster than his efforts to thwart it; (c) any of his legislative fantasies, notably the funding of his border wall, are doomed; and (d) and his pouting in Paris elevated his international image as a buffoon to a whole new level of notoriety.
Perfect
shraby
(21,946 posts)Jarqui
(10,416 posts)He took a good shot at Schumer I wasn't aware of ...
As for Schumer, his water-carrying for Facebook, as documented by the Times, is mortifying: He even tried to shut down a fellow Democratic senator, Mark Warner, who dared question the company. (It will surprise no one that Facebooks employees contribute more to Schumer, the Democrats Senate leader, than any other member of Congress.) Its a cruel irony, I guess, that prominent Clinton supporters like Sandberg and Schumer in the end contributed to Trumps victory by allowing Russian interference to play out unchecked at Facebook for much of 2016. But it is not a fresh irony. As I wrote in my New York piece on Trump and Roy Cohn this spring, From the mid-1970s to the turn of the century, well before Trump debuted on The Apprentice or flirted more than glancingly with politics, he gained power and consolidated it with the help of allies among the elites of New Yorks often nominally Democratic and liberal Establishment some of them literally the same allies who boosted Cohn. Those powerful Democrats priority, I posited, was raw personal power that could be leveraged for their own enrichment, privilege, and celebrity. And so the story of Sandberg, Schumer, Facebook, and Trumps 2016 victory, as told by the Times, is yet another chapter in that same sordid narrative.
NBachers
(17,959 posts)"Mortifying" is my main take-away word from this segment.
Jarqui
(10,416 posts)Therefore, I questioned it's accuracy.
Because Rich cited NY Times, I thought I'd post it to see what others had to say about it.
I'm one who would like to see an orderly transition of leadership from Pelosi to someone new for 2020. I'm not urgently in need. I like Nancy and have no problem with her being leader in 2019 while we sort this out.
It seemed a little hypocritical since I feel Nancy has done a better job than Schumer and I had not expressed my concerns about him. Like Nancy, I don't hate the guy or anything and I'm not in a panic to see action. He's on our side so he has my sympathies. I just have not been that impressed and feel McConnell cleaned up. Nancy, Schiff et al seemed to do a better job battling the House.
DFW
(56,261 posts)McConnell is a master tactician who has been at his post for years, and was an expert at dirty subterfuge for decades before that. He wanted the Majority Leader post like King Midas wanted gold.
Ryan, on the other hand, did everything he could to not accept the post of Speaker of the House because he sensed that it was a medium-term ticket out the door, and he was right.
duforsure
(11,885 posts)Make President Obama, Hillary Clinton , and other prominent people that have opposed him by claiming they are criminals, and make up something to promote their prosecution with under his and McConnells kangaroo court judges they rushed into positions for themselves. Putin did this in Russia too. He'll try to frame them with crimes, abusing his power to do it to.
NastyRiffraff
(12,448 posts)He NEEDS the adulation, and his nutty supporters are eager to give it to him. Before the election, he used the excuse of helping Republican candidates when all of them were really about him. Who knows what excuse, if any, he'll use now, but it's a good bet he'll go into full rally mode.
alwaysinasnit
(5,214 posts)cstanleytech
(26,893 posts)he thought he would never win and that his life would go back to whats normal for him however he did get sworn in and now he is blundering around like a bull in a china shop without a clue how to get out without breaking everything.
mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)unblock
(54,028 posts)He's been doing stuff like this since day one. He pulled the "its fraud if I lose" crap over two years ago. He's been appointing hacks with conflicts and cronies to obstruct justice all the time. He's been attacking the media ever since he realized they're not all foxnews.
Really there's nothing new here, except hopefully the media is finally calling it what is -- desperate acts of a desperate man who knows he's guilty and has no problem abusing the powers of office to try to evade accountability.
vlyons
(10,252 posts)Blue Owl
(54,259 posts)The rancid, putrid fumes are overpowering...
Cha
(304,047 posts)duty at the WH?!
Quemado
(1,262 posts)I like the sound of that! Maybe it will become a historical footnote.
PatrickforO
(15,040 posts)The sooner Trump is out of office the better off we'll all be.
He's definitely circling the drain - let's all hope he doesn't take us all with him when he goes down.
Because he could.
He is a truly scary fuck.
usaf-vet
(6,749 posts)When will this nightmare be over.
P.S. Thanks "kpete" for yet another great post.