As Noose Tightens, Trump is Becoming Even More Unhinged

In a midterms Blue Wave, Democrats picked up 40 seats and a majority in the House of Representatives, flipped 7 Governor seats and a number of Statehouses, and limited Senate gains to two seats in an election that heavily favored Republicans in the Senate. Mueller’s investigation is closing in on Trump. A Democratic House, beginning in January 2019, will exercise its Constitutional responsibility to hold Trump and his Administration accountable. Our corrupt, morally bankrupt, lawless, malignant narcissist demagogue ‘President’ for the first time faces another co-equal branch of the Federal Government, in addition to the Judiciary, that isn’t in bed with him and covering his ass.

As the noose tightens, Trump is lashing out: at Federal Judges, the Fourth Estate, the Mueller investigation, and Democrats. His support is eroding as a persistent majority who oppose him is joined by others tired of the constant chaos and drama of this mental and emotional cripple.

The only issue now is whether this wounded lunatic can cling to power for another two years, to face final rejection and humiliation at the hands of the voters in November 2020.

Trump: Rosenstein belongs in jail because 'he never should have picked a special counsel'

“President Donald Trump defended his decision to retweet a meme this week depicting his political opponents behind bars — including his sitting Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — signaling more storm clouds for the embattled No. 2 at the Justice Department after what appeared to be a brief reprieve from Trump’s attacks.

In an interview with the New York Post, Trump was asked about the photoshopped image, which depicted targets of Trump attacks like former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Robert Mueller, Huma Abedin and James Comey overlaid with the text ‘Now that Russian collusion is a proven lie, when do the trials for treason begin?’ Tucked just above Obama's head in the photo is Rosenstein's, smaller than almost all the other individuals in the image…”

Trump's aggressive bid to define Mueller's end game

“President Donald Trump is sending an unmistakable and daringly public message to his jailed ex-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, that his defiance of special counsel Robert Mueller could eventually see him walk free from jail.

And Trump's move -- delivered in an interview with the New York Post on Wednesday -- is more than just an effort to show mercy to a former associate. It is the latest sign of an increasingly aggressive effort to define the end game of the investigation with what looks more and more like an effort to use his presidential power to protect himself.

Trump's latest maneuvering came amid indications that Mueller's team, after a hiatus in midterm election season, is accelerating toward a pivotal moment in an investigation that has cast a cloud over Trump's presidency…”

Robert Mueller probe: Ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleads guilty to lying to Congress

“Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to lying to Congress about plans to build a Trump Tower in Russia.

Cohen reached the plea deal with Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Cohen pleaded guilty to a single count of lying to Congress about a Trump Tower development project in Moscow, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan…”

Attacks on the Truth

Trump continues to create an alternate reality, based on outright lies, attacking anyone or institution that poses a threat or challenge to his illegitimate reign.

The Trump Cult

Sensing the end is near, Trump's core lunatic 10-15% of Americans Trump Cult base, like their delusional 'Leader', is becoming more irreconcilable.

The Bottom Line

One way or another—removal from office in disgrace by the House and Senate or via Article 25, Section 4 of the Constitution, mortality and/or fate, military coup, or defeat at the hands of the voters in 2020—this unprecedented lunatic demagogue’s reign will end. When it does, the issue of the malignant cancer on the body politic his irreconcilable, authoritarian, willfully ignorant Trump Cult represents will remain. If they rise up in insurrection, we will annihilate them in a Civil War do-over and end this once and for all. But an alternative that should be seriously considered, to end this permanent divided and ungovernable Nation impasse, is to schedule a national plebiscite to allow the minority Trump supporters to move to, and all others to move from, the reddest States over a six-month period and then vote by two-thirds majority to voluntarily secede from the United States.

The Voters have spoken. The Midterm Elections as of November 12, 2018

My early take on the results…

The midterms were the beginning of the end of this unfortunate reactionary episode in America’s history. With Democrats assuming control of the House of Representatives in January 2019, Trump will face a co-equal branch of government with the power and will to challenge his corrupt reign. He will become even more erratic, unstable, threatening, and dangerous in the face of this new reality.

The First Two Days

My First Post Midterms Comments (Nov 7) – https://youtu.be/tMU93XncMkw

WARNING: Contains language many 6-year-old children use, but ‘offensive’ to some...

My Post Midterms Day Two Comments (Nov 8) – https://youtu.be/9sKeU7md0E8

Trump’s delusional and threatening comments after the election speak for themselves. 64 truly remarkable lines from Donald Trump's otherworldly post-election news conference

 “(CNN) On Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump took a victory lap via an almost-90-minute news conference that came fewer than 24 hours after his party lost control of the House but strengthened its Senate majority.

Trump seemed entirely unconcerned with his party's loss of one of the chambers of Congress -- instead he focused on reading out the names of Republican House members who refused to embrace him (and lost) and sparring with reporters…”

Contrast Trump’s performance with Nancy Pelosi’s post-election Press conference. Nancy Pelosi vows"bipartisanship and common ground" after Democrats take the House 

“House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi held a press conference on Capitol Hill Wednesday, hours after Democrats recaptured the House in the midterm elections Tuesday night. Pelosi discussed the gains in the House and in Democratic governorships, and called the day after the election was ‘great day for America’ and a chance to ‘restore the health of our democracy.’ She pledged to find ‘bipartisanship’ and ‘common ground where we can.’ …”

A Week After the Election

Close races demonstrate how tenuous and fragile our election process is. A number of races are still too close to call.

Democrats flipped a number of Governor seats, now trailing 23 – 25 with two races undecided. They flipped over 300 State House seats, retaking control of several chambers.

Democratic wins in these 9 states will have seismic policy consequences

Democrats retook the House of Representatives, 227 – 198, with 13 races undecided. Already the most pickups since the midterm election in 1974, after Nixon resigned in disgrace. Democrats are leading and likely to win another eight House seats.

2018 midterms update: What has changed since election night

Republicans held onto the Senate, 51 – 46, with three races undecided.

Election 2018: Big races in Arizona, Florida and Georgia still open

‘Massive Voter Fraud’

Trump, our delusional malignant narcissist demagogue ‘President’, and his propagandists are already talking about ‘massive voter fraud’ with no evidence, in races Republicans have already lost or are likely to lose. When they lose, even after gerrymandering Congressional districts for over a decade and massive voter suppression efforts in Republican controlled States, they still cannot accept defeat at the hands of We the People, the electorate.

Without evidence, Trump and Sessions warn of voter fraud in Tuesday’s elections

The Bottom Line

Trump lost the popular vote by an almost 2.9 million vote plurality in November 2016. His insistence on continuing to feed his lunatic Trump Cult base—less than half of his minority 40% support among Americans—has helped him cling to power, keeping Republicans in Congress in check. But his support among all Americans has eroded since his electoral college ‘election’, as evidenced by the nation-wide election results last Tuesday.

Like everything else, Trump made the Midterm elections all about him. It was a gamble that paid off in the Senate, where an already Republican favorable map this election cycle almost guaranteed Republicans would retain their majority. By holding the Senate, possibly even picking up a seat or two, he has likely ensured his survival in office until the 2020 election, barring some unimaginably outrageous act that drives his approval rating below 30 percent, still not an impossibility for this mental and emotional cripple.

The lunatic actually believes his rebuke by the Nation on Tuesday increases his re-election chances in 2020. I think not, but this entire unfortunate fiasco could still end up being a good thing for America in the long run. See my The End of the So-Called Era of Trump: An American Renaissance, updated November 10, 2018)

Trump’s Desperate Scorched Earth Gambit to Cling to Power

Recent Days

Recent days have revealed Trump’s cynical strategy to cling to power until 2021. While dividing America to the brink of a second Civil War, with only 40% approval and feeding and stoking his 10 to 15% of Americans Trump Cult minority core base, Trump has kept his Republican majority in Congress at bay. They dare not challenge his outrages, fearing primary challenges from Trump True Believers. With few exceptions, only Republicans who are not seeking re-election in the midterms next Tuesday will speak truth to this dangerous and corrupt malignant narcissist demagogue.

In the face of three recent Trump-supporter and Trump hate-speech inspired terrorist acts of violence, he blames the news media and refuses to acknowledge his central role and culpability for the divisiveness, hate, and violence. In the final days of the run-up to the midterms, Trump decries an ‘invasion’ by ‘thousands’ of Central Americans seeking legal asylum and tweets the most patently racist fear-mongering anti-immigrant video in recent history to his 55 million “followers”. He sends 5,000 military troops to our southern border and threatens to send another 10,000 troops, to stop a ‘wave’ of at most hundreds of immigrants that will not reach our border for over a month, if ever. Trump even proposes to alter birthright citizenship, guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment, with an executive order.

Three hate-filled crimes in 72 hours

Trump keeps pushing ‘invasion’ narrative that motivated Pittsburgh gunman to kill 11 people

Trump, in racially divisive ad, blames Democrats for undocumented immigrant convicted of kill­ing police

Trump eyeing executive order to end birthright citizenship, a move most legal experts and top House Republican say runs afoul of the Constitution

Last month, Trump and his morally bankrupt Republican majority Senate rammed through the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh—a partisan Right-Wing ideologue who never saw a presidential power he didn’t love—and put him on the Supreme Court.

The Kavanaugh confirmation fight is not a media story

What America Stands For

With a lunatic demagogue assaulting our sacred values and institutions, it’s a good time to remember what our Nation was at its birth.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson changed “Life, Liberty, and Property” to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. What a difference that has made throughout our history as a Nation, especially for the 90% Have Nots majority of Americans in general and renters like me in particular. The phrase comes from the Enlightenment. It did not mean the materialistic pursuit of things, conspicuous consumption, consumerism, selfishness, or hedonism. It meant the pursuit of a meaningful and purposeful good life. For a Nation founded by the rich and powerful few, for the benefit of the many, in opposition to a despotic King, it was a stunning and unprecedented guiding principle.

Why did Jefferson change "property" to the "pursuit of happiness"?

With the Constitution, the Founders—over two-hundred and forty years ago—knew they were writ­ing a living document they optimistically assumed would be read and amended by enlightened and honorable men, for as long as the Republic endured. At the time, women couldn't vote, most African Americans were slaves, Senators were appointed by State governments, and property owners and the Rich ruled and dominated public life. Our Founders optimistically assumed that enlightened and honorable men would serve as elected representative of The People, serving in good faith to preserve the Union, protect the Common Good, and continue to secure the bless­ings of liberty for all Americans.

In 1790, the first year the Census was conducted, the US population was close to four million. Almost all of the 3,172,000 Whites were White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), former British citizens. Almost all of the 757,208 Blacks were slaves. A bloody Civil War ended slavery. Large numbers of Irish, Italians, and Germans, including all four of my grandparents, immigrated to America in the 1800s and early 1900s and mostly settled in urban ethnic enclaves in the North \East and Midwest. At the same time, large numbers of Asians immigrated to America, settling in California and the West. With lower birthrates and the significant immigration of non-WASPs, by the early 1900s WASPs were no longer a majority of Americans. They embraced the same Irish, Italian, and German immigrants they despised, demonized, and exploited as their lessors as “Caucasians” for Census purposes, honorary “Whites”, to mask the loss of their majority status. Now, WASPs and the people they convinced were also White face the reality that they, in aggregate, will become a minority sometime in the 2040s, Trump’s racist attempts to prevent this demographic inevitability notwithstanding.

The diverse, inclusive, and welcoming Nation we became over the intervening centuries could not have been imagined by our Founders. But they would recognize that we became the Nation they made possible. A Civil War was waged to end slavery. Women and African Americans became full citizens; their rights guaranteed by the same Constitution that once excluded them. In recent decades, Hispanics, like all immigrants before them, have flocked to America, taken the lowest rung jobs, followed the rules, and worked their way into the American mainstream. Their children and grandchildren will become the plurality that displaces non-Hispanic Whites and makes Whites a minority for the first time in America.

The Founders could not have anticipated: (1) the current poisonous political environment; (2) a lunatic demagogue 'President' exploiting the fear, hate, and willful ignorance of a significant minority of Americans; or (3) a morally bankrupt Republican Party majority Congress providing no check or balance on that demagogue's power.

What's Going On?

Trump has been unprecedented and outrageous since he declared his candidacy. After almost two years in office, any fantasies that he would ‘pivot’ and become presidential in any sense of the word once in office are now untenable. Mental health professionals have repeatedly publicly warned that far from getting better, as a malignant narcissist, he would become more unstable, irrational, and erratic under the strain of office. As the midterms loom and loss of his Republican majority in the House is all but certain, Trump’s final desperate strategy becomes clear.

The Mueller Investigation will conclude and inevitably become public soon thereafter. With the loss of his Republican majority apologists and protectors in the House of Representatives in the midterms, at best Trump will face real oversight and endless hearings into his and his administration's wrong doing. At worst, he will face impeachment hearings and the ratification of Articles of Impeachment.

The only way Trump can cling to power until 2021, and keep the self-delusion that his fluke electoral college ‘election’ in 2016 can be repeated in 2020, is if: (1) a 5 – 4 Supreme Court backs him up as he opposes Congressional attempts to force the release of his tax returns and other damaging documents, and interrogate members of his administration under oath; and (2) a  Republican Senate refuses to confirm his impeachment in the House of Representatives.

President Obama tried to explain to this mental and emotional cripple, before Trump took office, that a president has no power or moral authority except that derived from the consent of the governed. Trump’s 2.9 million vote plurality defeat to Hillary Clinton denied him any mandate to govern. His inauguration address made clear that he had no intention of governing with the consent of the majority. His actions since have only made more obvious that the only thing Trump values is winning and power. He sees no legitimate interest or need except his own interests and needs.

Only We the People Can Stop this Demagogue

Trump will cling to power, by whatever means and at any cost to the Nation, as long as he can. There is no bottom to the madness and chaos he will bring, no outrage beyond his imagination, no standard of conduct or moral code he will not deliberately violate. A presumed anthropo­morphic patriarchal God did not bring Trump to power and will not deliver us from this dema­gogue’s reign. Only We the People can begin the end of this insanity by voting his Republican enablers out of office on November 6.