Americans at large are waking up to a grotesque, unavoidable reality: Trump is out of his depth

[Demovictory9]

https://www.salon.com/2020/03/10/the-presidency-is-an-actual-job-this-idiot-cant-do-it/

The presidency is an actual job: This idiot can't do it
Have we forgotten that being president isn't about posturing and tweeting? Without competent leaders, we're toast

BOB CESCA
MARCH 10, 2020 5:13PM (UTC)

Steven Wright, the great surrealist comedian, once inadvertently described how the last several weeks, if not the last three years, have felt to so many of us.

On his 1985 "I Have a Pony" concert album, Wright joked about the sensation of leaning too far back in his chair, but catching himself at the last second just before falling over backward. "I feel like that all the time," Wright added. We've all done it at one point or another, and we're all familiar with that momentary adrenaline rush of out-of-control panic.

With a pandemic rapidly circulating the globe, with the first stages of another financial crisis in progress and with a breathtakingly incompetent White House running the show, we're all feeling a bit like we're leaning too far back in our chairs. And we're more or less experiencing that sensation "all the time." So much of it's in reaction to the aforementioned breathtakingly incompetent White House and our even more incompetent president. He's supposed to be handling this with expertise and aplomb, as most previous chief executives have, but he absolutely isn't. In any way.

Instead, it's another crisis in which Donald Trump and his team of ass-kissing henchmen are dealing with it like the Three Stooges trying to fix the plumbing — Curly accidentally trapping himself in a cage of leaky pipes, while geysers of water shoot out of the light fixtures. Trump's total absence of presidential qualifications, like the fuel rods at Chernobyl's No. 4 reactor, are becoming rapidly exposed, precipitating a political, economic and public health meltdown unlike anything we've experienced in the modern age.

For several years now, Trump has managed to bullshit his way through his presidency, walking a narrow path while pretending he knows what's going on, pretending he has a handle on the details and responsibilities involved in serving in such a rarefied position.


Despite his inner delusions and outer bragging, he doesn't.

For three years, Trump leaned heavily on his skills as a well-practiced New York con man, and, accordingly, continued to cultivate the fanboy adulation of his Red Hat cult as his exclusive audience. Thanks in part to the blinding velocity of the firehose of news and a successful whitewashing effort provided by Fox News, previous nightmares such as the president's incompetent, callous and punitive reaction to Hurricane Maria have whizzed on by without Trump experiencing any blunt-force damage to his low-40s approval polling.

But now Americans at large are waking up to a grotesque, unavoidable reality: This isn't new. Trump has always been staggeringly out of his depth as president, routinely overwhelmed by the rigors and requirements of the gig, while appearing to act based solely on his own political and financial desperation.


For those of us who are overwhelmingly aware of his record, Trump's lack of qualifications for such a crucial job have always been blindingly obvious. As the coronavirus expands its reach, however, average voters who are neither political commentators or adoring loyalists deeply embedded inside his cult of tyranny are just now catching up in shocked horror to Trump's inability to handle the job. You can almost hear the sickening thud of jaws dropping at one example after another of the president's laundry list of fumbles in the face of a deadly emergency — job-performance deficiencies that make George W. Bush's presidency seem like Abe Lincoln by way of Capt. Steve Rogers. These bungled and botched reactions are rapidly fusing into our third simultaneous crisis, a "Trump Crisis," inevitably worsening both the pandemic and the stock market free-fall.

While Trump clearly didn't cause the pandemic, his total absence of sober and, most important, trustworthy leadership has worsened it, not unlike the mayor of Amity Island's reaction to the shark attacks in "Jaws." This is where it might be nice to have a president who can be trusted, at least as much as Americans have trusted other presidents in a crisis, rather than a buffoon whose very appearance is a lie — a makeup-slathered, badly-coiffed hustler who lies with the same unblinking ease as the Stones performing "Satisfaction," to the tune of nearly 17,000 lies in a little more than three years.


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There's no hope for the current president, but there's an election in less than eight months. It's another opportunity to finally lean forward in our chairs, and end this madness before we fall over backward and break our necks.

https://www.salon.com/2020/03/10/the-presidency-is-an-actual-job-this-idiot-cant-do-it/

[UpInArms]

1. Important reading ...

The presidency isn't a show, elections aren't a game and the president should never be a game-show host.

The ascendency of Donald Trump, along with this three-year, seemingly endless plasma stream of abnormalcy, now metastasizing into full-on Trump fatigue, is a consequence of this glitch in our fellow Americans' perception of the modern presidency. This week and in the weeks to come, people will die because too many of us forgot what this job ought to signify and what qualities those who occupy it need to possess.

[Boomerproud]

2. Huge K&R

I refuse to be taken down by cultists.

[Chemisse]

3. Now to only survive another 10 months! n/t

[KY_EnviroGuy]

4. What America really needs to wake up to is.....

that this is a feature not a flaw, of the GOP's grand plan to demean, de-fund and diminish the entire U.S. Government so that ultra-wealthy global business interests can step in and "fix" things with privatization, therefore everything must be done at a profit. It's just that simple. They've even told us that's their intention.

They're doing the exact same thing in the UK and many other Western democracies (that stinky little thing that keeps interfering with their plans).

The whole idea is to completely shatter the public's reliance and confidence in their government, a job at which Trump and McConnell are doing quite well.

This process has been happening on steroids in my time since Nixon's and Reagan's terms........

[gademocrat7]

5. We must defeat the orange buffoon in November.

[Captain Zero]

6. "Trump knows nothing about anything, and he does not work."

I wish I had caught the name of the person who said it on Rachel within the last two weeks.

It was a guy who worked with Trump in his casino businesses. He said this is what he realized shortly after beginning to work with Trump. That Trump knew nothing about the casino business, and wasn't about to learn it. And, he might put in appearances at the office or wherever it was required that he make an appearance, but the guy really DID NOT WORK.

Then he said after some time he realized Trump knew Nothing about Anything at all.

The guy did write a book about his time in the casino business with Trump too. Guess I need to do some research.

[Dave Starsky]

7. His ignorance is staggering. I've never seen anything like it.

I've known people who are about as uneducated as can possibly be. People who have only bodily attended a school every now and then and have never read even a children's book from cover to cover. Every one of those people could tell you about something that you didn't know, whether it be about cooking or fishing or hunting or tieing a fucking knot. Trump demonstrates regularly that he knows nothing about anything. And he doesn't ever want to know.

[cwydro]

8. Excellent read.

Spot on.