George Conway's Monumental And Devastating Takedown Of Donald Trump, The Man
George Conway , husband of the alternative facts queen Kellyanne, has a new article on Trump and he lowers the boom with a smack down of epic proportions.
It is a good half hours worth of material, which I am posting some of below.
Here is a small portion
In July, he described himself in a tweet as “so great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius!” (Exclamation point his, of course.) That “ stable genius ” self-description is one that Trump has repeated over and over again—even though he has trouble with spelling , doesn’t know the difference between a hyphen and an apostrophe, doesn’t appear to understand fractions , needs basic geography lessons , speaks at the level of a fourth grader , and engages in “serial misuse of public language” and “cannot write sentences,” and even though members of his own administration have variously considered him to be a “moron,” an “idiot,” a “dope,” “dumb as shit,” and a person with the intelligence of a “kindergartener” or a “fifth or sixth grader” or an “11-year-old child.”
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There is quite a bit more at the link
...Even Trump’s own allies recognize the degree of his narcissism. When he launched racist attacks on four congresswomen of color, Senator Lindsey Graham explained , “That’s just the way he is. It’s more narcissism than anything else.” So, too, do skeptics of assigning a clinical diagnosis. “No one is denying,” Frances told Rolling Stone , “that he is as narcissistic an individual as one is ever likely to encounter.” The president’s exceptional narcissism is his defining characteristic—and understanding that is crucial to evaluating his fitness for office.
The DSM-5 describes its conception of pathological narcissism this way: “The essential feature of narcissistic personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy that begins by early adulthood and is present in a variety of contexts.” The manual sets out nine diagnostic criteria that are indicative of the disorder, but only five of the nine need be present for a diagnosis of NPD to be made. Here are the nine:
These criteria are accompanied by explanatory notes that seem relevant here: “Vulnerability in self-esteem makes individuals with narcissistic personality disorder very sensitive to ‘injury’ from criticism or defeat.” And “criticism may haunt these individuals and may leave them feeling humiliated, degraded, hollow and empty. They may react with disdain, rage, or defiant counterattack.” The manual warns, moreover, that “interpersonal relations are typically impaired because of problems derived from entitlement, the need for admiration, and the relative disregard for the sensitivities of others.” And, the DSM-5 adds, “though overweening ambition and confidence may lead to high achievement, performance may be disrupted because of intolerance of criticism or defeat.”
The diagnostic criteria offer a useful framework for understanding the most remarkable features of Donald Trump’s personality, and of his presidency. (1) Exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements ? ( 2) Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance ? (3) Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and should only associate with other special or high-status people? That’s Trump, to a T. As Trump himself might put it, he exaggerates accomplishments better than anyone. In July, he described himself in a tweet as “so great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius!” (Exclamation point his, of course.) That “ stable genius ” self-description is one that Trump has repeated over and over again—even though he has trouble with spelling , doesn’t know the difference between a hyphen and an apostrophe, doesn’t appear to understand fractions , needs basic geography lessons , speaks at the level of a fourth grader , and engages in “serial misuse of public language” and “cannot write sentences,” and even though members of his own administration have variously considered him to be a “moron,” an “idiot,” a “dope,” “dumb as shit,” and a person with the intelligence of a “kindergartener” or a “fifth or sixth grader” or an “11-year-old child.”
Trump wants everyone to know : He’s “the super genius of all time,” one of “the smartest people anywhere in the world.” Not only that, but he considers himself a hero of sorts. He avoided military service , yet claims he would have run, unarmed, into a school during a mass shooting. Speaking to a group of emergency medical workers who had lost friends and colleagues on 9/11, he claimed, falsely, to have “spent a lot of time down there with you,” while generously allowing that “I’m not considering myself a first responder.” He has spoken, perhaps jokingly, perhaps not, about awarding himself the Medal of Honor.
Trump claims to be an expert—the world’s greatest—in anything and everything. As one video mash-up shows , Trump has at various times claimed—in all seriousness—that no one knows more than he does about: taxes, income, construction, campaign finance, drones, technology, infrastructure, work visas, the Islamic State, “things” generally, environmental-impact statements, Facebook, renewable energy, polls, courts, steelworkers, golf, banks, trade, nuclear weapons, tax law, lawsuits, currency devaluation, money, “the system,” debt, and politicians. Trump described his admission as a transfer student into Wharton’s undergraduate program as “ super genius stuff ,” even though he didn’t strike the admissions officer who approved his candidacy as a “genius,” let alone a “super genius”; Trump claimed to have “heard I was first in my class” at Wharton, despite the fact that his name didn’t appear on the dean’s list there, or in the commencement program’s list of graduates receiving honors . And Trump, through an invented spokesman, even lied his way onto the Forbes 400.
(4) Requires excessive admiration ? Last Thanksgiving, Trump was asked what he was most thankful for. His answer: himself , of course. A number of years ago, he made a video for Forbes in which he interviewed two of his children . The interview topic: how great they thought Donald Trump was. When his own father died, in 1999, Trump gave one of the eulogies. As Alan Marcus, a former Trump adviser, recounted the story to Timothy O’Brien , he began “more or less like this: ‘I was in my Trump Tower apartment reading about how I was having the greatest year in my career in The New York Times when the security desk called to say my brother Robert was coming upstairs’”—an introductory line that provoked “‘an audible gasp’ from mourners stunned by Trump’s self-regard.” According to a Rolling Stone article , other eulogists spoke about the deceased, but Trump “used the time to talk about his own accomplishments and to make it clear that, in his mind, his father’s best achievement was producing him, Donald.” The author of a book about the Trump family described the funeral as one that “wasn’t about Fred Trump,” but rather “was an opportunity to do some brand burnishing by Donald, for Donald. Throughout his remarks, the first-person singular pronouns—I and me and mine—far outnumbered he and his. Even at his own father’s funeral, Donald Trump couldn’t cede the limelight.”
And he still can’t. Here’s a man who holds rallies with no elections in sight, so that he can bask in his supporters’ cheers; even when elections are near, and he’s supposed to be helping other candidates, he consistently keeps the focus on himself. He loves to watch replays of himself at the rallies, and “ luxuriates in the moments he believes are evidence of his brilliance .” In July, after his controversial, publicly funded, campaign-style Independence Day celebration , Trump tweeted , “Our Country is the envy of the World. Thank you, Mr. President!” In February 2017, Trump was given a private tour of the newly opened National Museum of African American History and Culture, and paused in front of an exhibit on the Dutch role in the slave trade. He turned to the museum’s director and said , “You know, they love me in the Netherlands.”
(5) A sense of entitlement ? (9) Arrogant, haughty behaviors ? Trump is the man who, on the infamous Access Hollywood tape, said, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything you want”—including grabbing women by their genitals. He’s the man who also once said , “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” (8) Envious of others ? Here’s a man so unable to stand the praise received by a respected war hero and statesman, Senator John McCain, that he has continued to attack McCain months after McCain’s death ; his jealousy led White House staff to direct the Pentagon to keep a destroyer called the USS John S. McCain out of Trump’s line of sight during a presidential visit to an American naval base in Japan. And Trump, despite being president, still seems envious of President Barack Obama . (6) Interpersonally exploitative ? Just watch the Access Hollywood tape, or ask any of the hundreds of contractors and employees Trump the businessman allegedly stiffed, or speak with any of the two dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, sexual assault, or rape. (Trump has denied all their claims.)
Finally, (7) Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings or needs of others ? One of the most striking aspects of Trump’s personality is his utter and complete lack of empathy. By empathy , psychologists and psychiatrists mean the ability to understand or relate to what someone else is experiencing—the capacity to envision someone else’s feelings, perceptions, and thoughts.
The notorious lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn, who once counseled Trump, said that “Donald pisses ice water,” and indeed, examples of Trump’s utter lack of normal human empathy abound. Trump himself has told the story of a charity ball—an “incredible ball”—he once held at Mar-a-Lago for the Red Cross. “So what happens is, this guy falls off right on his face, hits his head, and I thought he died … His wife is screaming—she’s sitting right next to him, and she’s screaming.” By his own account, Trump’s concern wasn’t the poor man’s well-being or his wife’s. It was the bloody mess on his expensive floor. “You know, beautiful marble floor, didn’t look like it. It changed color. Became very red … I said, ‘Oh, my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away. I couldn’t, you know, he was right in front of me and I turned away.” Trump describes himself as saying, after the injured man was hauled away on a makeshift stretcher, “‘Get that blood cleaned up! It’s disgusting!’ The next day, I forgot to call [the man] to say is he okay … It’s just not my thing.”
And then there was 9/11. Trump gave an extraordinary call-in interview to a metropolitan–New York television station just hours after the Twin Towers collapsed. He was asked whether one of his downtown buildings, 40 Wall Street, had suffered any damage. Trump’s immediate response was to brag about the building’s brand-new ranking among New York skyscrapers: “40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest—and then when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second-tallest. And now it’s the tallest . ” (This wasn’t even true —a building a block away from Trump’s, 70 Pine Street, was a little taller.)
That human empathy isn’t Trump’s thing has been demonstrated time and again during his presidency as well. In October 2017, he reportedly told the widow of a serviceman killed in action “something to the effect that ‘he knew what he was getting into when he signed up, but I guess it hurts anyway.’” (Trump later claimed that this account was “fabricated … Sad!” and that “I have proof,” but of course he never produced any.) On a less macabre note, on Christmas Eve last year, Trump took calls on NORAD’s Santa Tracker phone line, which children call to find out where Santa Claus is as he makes his rounds. Trump asked a 7-year-old girl from South Carolina: “Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at 7, it’s marginal, right?”
According to Woodward’s Fear , when Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, resigned, he found out about his replacement when he saw a tweet from Trump saying that he had appointed John Kelly as the new chief of staff—moments after Priebus and Trump had spoken about waiting to announce the news. Kelly was appalled, and that night apologetically told Priebus, “I’d never do this to you. I’d never been offered this job until the tweet came out. I would have told you.” His predecessor, though, wasn’t surprised. “It made no sense, Priebus realized, unless you understood … ‘The president has zero psychological ability to recognize empathy or pity in any way.’”
Priebus apparently isn’t the only White House staffer to have learned this; in February 2018, when Trump met with survivors of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting and their loved ones, his communications aide actually gave him a note card that made clear that “the president needed to be reminded to show compassion and understanding to traumatized survivors,” as The New York Times put it. The empathy cheat sheet contained a reminder to say such things as “I hear you.” One aide to President Obama told the Times that had she and her colleagues given their boss such a reminder card, “he would have looked at us like we were crazy people.”
Most recently, in July of this year, in a stunning scene captured on video , Trump met in the Oval Office with the human-rights activist Nadia Murad, a Yazidi Iraqi who had been captured, raped, and tortured by the Islamic State, and had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for speaking out about the plight of the Yazidis and other victims of genocide and religious persecution. Her voice breaking, she implored the president of the United States to help her people return safely to Iraq. Trump could barely look her in the eye. She told him that ISIS had murdered her mother and six brothers. Trump, apparently not paying much attention, asked, “Where are they now?” “They killed them,” she said once again. “They are in the mass grave in Sinjar, and I’m still fighting just to live in safety.” Trump, who has publicly said that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, seemed interested in the conversation only at the end, when he asked Murad about why she won the prize.
Another equally unforgettable video documents Trump visiting Puerto Rico shortly after Hurricane Maria, tossing rolls of paper towels into a crowd of victims. He later responded vindictively to charges that his administration hadn’t done enough to help the island, prompting the mayor of San Juan to observe that Trump had “augmented” Puerto Rico’s “devastating human crisis … because he made it about himself, not about saving our lives,” and because “when expected to show empathy he showed disdain and lack of respect.”
In October 2018, a gunman burst into Shabbat morning services at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh and sprayed worshipers with semiautomatic-rifle and pistol fire. Eleven people died. Three days later, the president and first lady visited the community, and the day after that, the first thing Trump tweeted about the visit was this: “Melania and I were treated very nicely yesterday in Pittsburgh. The Office of the President was shown great respect on a very sad & solemn day. We were treated so warmly. Small protest was not seen by us, staged far away. The Fake News stories were just the opposite—Disgraceful!” Similarly, after gunmen killed dozens in the span of a single August weekend in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, Trump went on a one-day sympathy tour that was marked by attacks on his hosts and on political enemies , and an obsessive focus on himself .
What kind of human being, let alone politician, would engage in such unempathetic, self-centered behavior while memorializing such horrible tragedies? Only the most narcissistic person imaginable—or a person whose narcissism would be difficult to imagine if we hadn’t seen it ourselves. The evidence of Trump’s narcissism is overwhelming—indeed, it would be a gargantuan task to try to marshal all of it, especially as it mounts each and every day.
Yet pathological narcissism is not the only personality disorder that Trump’s behavior clearly indicates. A second disorder also frequently ascribed to Trump by professionals is sociopathy—what the DSM-5 calls antisocial personality disorder. As described by Lance Dodes, a former assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, “sociopathy is among the most severe mental disturbances.” Central to sociopathy is a complete lack of empathy—along with “an absence of guilt.” Sociopaths engage in “intentional manipulation, and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification. People with sociopathic traits have a flaw in the basic nature of human beings … They are lacking an essential part of being human.” For its part, the DSM-5 states that the “essential feature of antisocial personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.”
The question of whether Trump can serve as a national fiduciary turns more on his narcissistic tendencies than his sociopathic ones, but Trump’s sociopathic characteristics sufficiently intertwine with his narcissistic ones that they deserve mention here. These include, to quote the DSM-5 , “deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others.” Trump’s deceitfulness—his lying—has become the stuff of legend; journalists track his “false and misleading claims” as president by the thousands upon thousands . Aliases? For years, Trump would call journalists while posing as imaginary PR men, “John Barron” and “John Miller,” so that he could plant false stories about being wealthy, brilliant, and sexually accomplished . Trump was, and remains, a con artist: Think of Trump University , which even Trump’s own employees described as a scam (and which sparked a lawsuit that resulted in a $25 million settlement, although with no admission of wrongdoing). There’s ACN , an alleged Ponzi scheme Trump promoted, and from which he made millions (he, his company, and his family deny the allegations of fraud) ; and the border wall that hasn’t been built and that Mexico’s never going to pay for. Trump is a pathological liar if ever there was one.
Other criteria for antisocial personality disorder include “failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest”; “impulsivity or failure to plan ahead”; and “lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.” Check, check, and check: As for social norms and lawful behaviors, there are all the accusations of sexual misconduct. Also relevant is what the Mueller report says about Trump’s efforts to derail the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian interference in the last presidential election. And given what federal prosecutors in New York said about his role in directing hush money to be paid to the porn star Stormy Daniels, a strong case can be made that Trump has committed multiple acts of obstruction of justice and criminal violations of campaign-finance laws . Were he not president, and were it not for two Justice Department opinions holding that a sitting president cannot be indicted , he might well be facing criminal charges now .
As for impulsivity, that essentially describes what gets him into trouble most: It was his “ impulsiveness—actually, total recklessness ”—that came close to destroying him in the 1980s. In “response to his surging celebrity,” Trump, “acquisitive to the point of recklessness,” engaged in “a series of manic, ill-advised ventures” that “nearly did him in,” Politico reported . His impulsiveness has buffeted his presidency as well: Think of his first ordering, then calling off, the bombing of Iran in June, and his aborted meeting with the Taliban at Camp David just last month. And remember the racist tweets he sent in mid-July in which he told four nonwhite representatives—three of whom were born in the United States—to “go back” to the “countries” they “originally came from.” Those tweets were apparently triggered by something he saw on TV.
Or consider his impetuous, unvetted personnel decisions, such as his failed selection of Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician, as Veterans Affairs secretary, and his choice of Representative John Ratcliffe as director of national intelligence. It was just so on The Apprentice , where editors and producers found that “Trump was frequently unprepared” for tapings, and frequently fired strong contestants “on a whim,” which required them “to ‘reverse engineer’ the episode, scouring hundreds of hours of footage … in an attempt to assemble an artificial version of history in which Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip decision made sense.” One editor remarked that he found “it strangely validating that they’re doing the same thing in the White House.” Trump sees none of this as a problem; to the contrary, he prides himself on following his instincts, once telling an interviewer : “I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody’s brain can ever tell me.”
And lack of remorse? That’s a hallmark of sociopathy, and goes hand in hand with a lack of human conscience. In a narcissistic sociopath, it’s intertwined with a lack of empathy. Trump hardly ever shows remorse, or apologizes, for anything. The one exception: With his presidential candidacy on the line in early October 2016, Trump expressed regret for the Access Hollywood video. But within weeks, almost as soon as the campaign was over, Trump began claiming , to multiple people, that the video may have been doctored—a preposterous lie, especially since he had acknowledged that the voice was his, others had confirmed this as well, and there was no evidence of tampering. “We don’t think that was my voice,” he said to a senator. The “we,” no doubt, was a lie as well.
Again, as with his narcissism, all this evidence of Trump’s sociopathy only begins to tell the tale. The bottom line is that this is a man who, over and over and over again, has indifferently mused about the possibility of killing 10 million or so people in Afghanistan to end the war there, while allowing that “I’m not looking to kill 10 million people”—as though this were a realistic but merely less preferred option than, say, raising import tariffs on chewing gum. As a 1997 profile of Trump in The New Yorker put it, Trump has “an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul.”
In a way, Trump’s sociopathic tendencies are simply an extension of his extreme narcissism. Take the pathological lying. Extreme narcissists aren’t necessarily pathological liars, but they can be, and when they are, the lying supports the narcissism. As Lance Dodes has put it , “People like Donald Trump who have severe narcissistic disturbances can’t tolerate being criticized, so the more they are challenged in this essential way, the more out of control they become.” In particular, “They change reality to suit themselves in their own mind.” Although Trump “lies because of his sociopathic tendencies,” telling falsehoods to fool others, Dodes argues, he also lies to himself, to protect himself from narcissistic injury. And so Donald Trump has lied about his net worth , the size of the crowd at his inauguration, and supposed voter fraud in the 2016 election.
The latter kind of lying, Dodes says, “is in a way more serious,” because it can indicate “a loose grip on reality”—and it may well tell us where Trump is headed in the face of impeachment hearings. Lying to prevent narcissistic injury can metastasize to a more significant loss of touch with reality. As Craig Malkin puts it , when pathological narcissists “can’t let go of their need to be admired or recognized, they have to bend or invent a reality in which they remain special,” and they “can lose touch with reality in subtle ways that become extremely dangerous over time.” They can become “dangerously psychotic,” and “it’s just not always obvious until it’s too late.”
Experts haven’t suggested that Trump is psychotic, but many have contended that his narcissism and sociopathy are so inordinate that he fits the bill for “ malignant narcissism .” Malignant narcissism isn’t recognized as an official diagnosis; it’s a descriptive term coined by the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, and expanded upon by another psychoanalyst, Otto Kernberg, to refer to an extreme mix of narcissism and sociopathy, with a degree of paranoia and sadism mixed in. One psychoanalyst explains that “the malignant narcissist is pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioural regulation with characteristic demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism.” In the view of some in the mental-health community, such as John Gartner , Trump “exhibits all four” components of malignant narcissism: “narcissism, paranoia, antisocial personality and sadism.”
Mental-health professionals have raised a variety of other concerns about Trump’s mental state; the last worth specifically mentioning here is the possibility that, apart from any personality disorder, he may be suffering cognitive decline . This is a serious matter: Trump seems to be continually slurring words , and recently misread teleprompters to say that the Continental Army secured airports during the American Revolutionary War, and to say that the shooting in Dayton had occurred in Toledo. His overall level of articulateness today doesn’t come close to what he exhibits in decades-old television clips. But that could be caused by ordinary age-related decline, stress, or other factors; to know whether something else is going on, according to experts , would require a full neuropsychological work-up, of the kind that Trump hasn’t yet had and, one supposes, isn’t about to agree to.
But even that doesn’t exhaust all the mental-health issues possibly indicated by Trump’s behavior. His “mental state,” according to Justin A. Frank, a former clinical professor of psychiatry and physician who wrote a book about Trump’s psychology, “include[s] so many psychic afflictions” that a “working knowledge of psychiatric disorders is essential to understanding Trump.” Indeed, as Gartner puts it: “There are a lot of things wrong with him—and, together, they are a scary witch’s brew.”
This is a lot to digest. It would take entire books to catalog all of Trump’s behavioral abnormalities and try to explain them—some of which have already been written . But when you line up what the Framers expected of a president with all that we know about Donald Trump, his unfitness becomes obvious. The question is whether he can possibly act as a public fiduciary for the nation’s highest public trust. To borrow from the Harvard Law Review article , can he follow the “proscriptions against profit, bad faith, and self-dealing,” manifest “a strong concern about avoiding ultra vires action” (that is, action exceeding the president’s legal authority), and maintain “a duty of diligence and carefulness”? Given that Trump displays the extreme behavioral characteristics of a pathological narcissist, a sociopath, or a malignant narcissist—take your pick—it’s clear that he can’t.
To act as a fiduciary requires you to put someone else’s interests above your own, and Trump’s personality makes it impossible for him to do that. No president before him, at least in recent memory, has ever displayed such obsessive self-regard. For Trump, Trump always comes first. He places his interests over everyone else’s—including those of the nation whose laws he swore to faithfully execute. That’s not consistent with the duties of the president, whether considered from the standpoint of constitutional law or psychology.
Indeed, Trump’s view of his presidential powers can only be described as profoundly narcissistic, and his narcissism has compelled him to disregard the Framers’ vision of his constitutional duties in every respect. Bad faith ? Trump has repeatedly used executive powers, threatened to use executive powers, or expressed the view that executive powers should be used to advance his personal interests and punish his political opponents. Thus, for example, he has placed restrictions on disaster aid to Puerto Rico in apparent response to criticism of him and his administration; directed the Pentagon to reconsider whether to award a $10 billion contract to Amazon because its CEO owns The Washington Post , whose coverage he doesn’t like; threatened to take “regulatory and legislative” action against Facebook, Google, and Twitter, because of their supposed “terrible bias” against him; tried to get White House staff to tell the Justice Department to try to block the merger between AT&T and Time Warner in order to punish CNN for its coverage; attacked his first attorney general for allowing the indictment of two Republican congressmen who had supported him; and ordered the revocation of the security clearance of a former CIA director who had criticized him.
And now, in just the past two weeks, we’ve seen the pièce de résistance of bad faith, the one that’s brought Trump to the verge of impeachment: Trump’s efforts to use his presidential authority to strong-arm a foreign nation , Ukraine, into digging up or concocting evidence in support of a preposterous conspiracy theory about one of his principal challengers for the presidency, former Vice President Joe Biden. As one political historian has put it , Trump’s use of his Article II authority to pursue vendettas is “both a sign of deep insecurity … and also just a litany of abuse of power,” and something no president has done “as consistently or as viciously as Trump has.”
Profit ? Self-dealing ? Look at the way Trump is using the presidency to advertise his real-estate holdings—most notably and recently, his apparent determination to hold the next G7 summit at the Trump Doral resort in Florida. Ultra vires ? Trump has made the outrageous claim that the Constitution gives him “ the right to do whatever I want as president .” Consistent with that view, he has repeatedly suggested that , by executive order, he can overturn the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship—an utterly lawless assertion . His core constitutional obligations flow from Article II’s command that he faithfully execute the laws, yet he has told subordinates not to worry about violating the laws. According to one former senior administration official quoted in The New York Times , Trump’s “constant instinct all the time was: Just do it, and if we get sued, we get sued … Almost as if the first step is a lawsuit. I guess he thinks that because that’s how business worked for him in the private sector. But federal law is different, and there really isn’t a settling step when you break federal law.” Federal law is also different, one might add, because he’s in charge of upholding it.
Facing the approach of the 2020 election with not a single new mile of his border wall having been built, Trump, as reported in The Washington Post , has urged his aides to violate all manner of laws to expedite construction—environmental laws, contracting laws, constitutional limitations on the taking of private property—and “has told worried subordinates that he will pardon them of any potential wrongdoing” they commit along the way.
A duty of diligence and carefulness ? Trump is purely impulsive, and incapable of planning or serious forethought, and his compulsion for lying has enervated any capacity for thoughtful analysis he may have ever had. He apparently won’t read anything; he himself has said, in regard to briefings, that he prefers to read “as little as possible”—despite occupying what David A. Graham calls “one of the most demanding jobs in the world” precisely because its “holder is expected to consume, digest, and absorb prodigious amounts of information via reading.”
And then there’s the question of honesty. Fiduciaries must be honest. The Framers understood , based upon the law of public officeholding in their time, that “faithful execution” of the laws requires “the absence of bad faith through honesty.” In the private realm, fiduciaries owe a duty of candor, of truth-telling; the standard of behavior was once memorably described by the renowned jurist Benjamin Cardozo as “not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive.” Today, in my own practice area of corporate litigation, corporate officers and directors, as fiduciaries, owe duties that include a duty to disclose material information truthfully and completely . Trump, whose lawyers wouldn’t dare allow him to speak to the special counsel lest he make a prosecutable false statement, couldn’t pass this standard to save his life.
Trump’s incapacity affects all manner of subjects addressed by the presidency, but can be seen most acutely in foreign affairs and national security. Presidential narcissism and personal ego have frequently displaced the national interest. Today, the most obvious—and stunning—example is his conduct toward Ukraine: While trying to pressure the Ukrainian president to restart an investigation against Biden, Trump ordered the withholding of vital military aid to that country, thus weakening its ability to withstand Russian aggression and undermining the interests of the United States. But the list goes on: Last summer, in a narcissistic effort at self-aggrandizement, Trump told the Pakistani prime minister about a conversation he had with the Indian prime minister—leading India to deny , indignantly, that any such conversation had ever taken place. Trump reportedly even lied about trade talks with China —announcing that phone calls had occurred that never occurred and that the Chinese denied took place —in an apparent attempt to pump up the stock market and take credit for it.
Trump’s penchant for vendettas also doesn’t stop at the water’s edge—American interests be damned. When confidential cables sent by the United Kingdom’s ambassador to his government were leaked, and were revealed to contain uncomplimentary (but obvious) observations about Trump’s ineptitude and emotional insecurity, and the dysfunction of his administration, Trump went on an extended Twitter tirade against the ambassador, calling him “wacky” and “a very stupid guy,” “ a pompous fool ,” and ultimately declared: “We will no longer deal with him.” When reports surfaced that Trump was interested in having the United States purchase Greenland from Denmark, and the Danish prime minister understandably described talk about such a purchase as “ an absurd discussion ” in light of Greenland’s position on the matter, Trump canceled a visit to Denmark, and then attacked the prime minister, calling her comments “nasty” ; for good measure, he also attacked some of America’s NATO allies.
At the same time, Trump happily succumbs to flattery from America’s enemies; he received “beautiful … great letters” from North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, and therefore “ fell in love ” with him, and rewards him with kind words and meetings even as North Korea continues to develop new nuclear weapons and delivery systems . Of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, Trump once said on television: “If he says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him.”.........
What I have posted is pretty long, the actual full article is quite a bit longer.
How anyone in America could read material like this and still support or vote for Donald Trump is probably the greatest mystery is American history.
Obama was in politics before he was the POTUS. Trump? Not so much and by his actions alone he clearly is in way over his head.
It's worse than that. He's in way over his hair!
Not sure a dead ferret qualifies as hair, but you aren't wrong Sis!
The vast majority of the USA disagrees with you, and from a legal standpoint, he was qualified.
So is Trump...What's your point?
"I like Obama better than Trump" is subjective at best. Everybody has their own opinions.
Nope
Wally was trying to tell us how Obama wasn't qualified and Trump is. Following a thread would have answered your question before you asked it.
OK, you're right.
That's a first for you.
Congrats...
Well he was a 'community troublemaker' for the Catholic Church so there's that...
I'd ask you to support your claim but I know it's a waste of time.
Yet you can't post any evidence to support that because you pulled it out of your nether region.
That happens a lot when bullshit gets posted.
Not when you're posting facts. Now as for bullshit, ya, some let bullshit stick to NT walls, I prefer to hose it off.
Your pretense that navel gazing is revelatory is hilarious.
Actually, I think the dead ferret on his head is more qualified to be POTUS
Being a reality show host does?
True, and probably speaks better English..
This sums its up pretty well. Given the Democrats descent into ideological extremism, it's impossible to vote for them,
— John Hayward (@Doc_0) October 11, 2019
If you're not ready to do whatever it takes to protect the Bill of Rights, the 1st and 2nd Amendments – and that VERY CLEARLY requires defeating the Democrat candidate in 2020 by all means necessary – then in what sense are you an American "conservative?"
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And yet Trump the dimwit, buffoon, clown, and moron has stymied the entire press corps, career bureaucrats, gatekeepers of the intelligence community, Congress, political Washington, and foreign leaders. Trump can change the world with a Tweet and not one of the mentally superior, politically correct elite has been able to stop Trump.
Trump has revealed that the intellectual elite controlling the world are a sham. The real idiots have been a public that allowed themselves to be so easily misled into believing they are too stupid to live their own lives.
You are admiting that Trump is the fault of Trump supporters. Without them his power would be zero.
He hasnt "stymied the entire press corps, career bureaucrats, gatekeepers of the intelligence community, Congress, political Washington, and foreign leaders." Most of them think he's a twisted moron.
He has stymied 80 or 90% of Republican voters, which has allowed him to hold a hammer over the rest of the Republican party politicians.
Trump is still there. Trump is still Tweeting. The press corps still publicizes Trump. The news cycle really has become the Trump show. Trump is still President of the United States; it doesn't matter what the intellectual elite think.
Voters put Trump in office. Trump wasn't gifted the nomination by Republican insiders trying to rig the primaries. Trump had to beat the Republican Party before he beat the Democratic Party.
Yes, Trump was elected to be a hammer; that's the whole point. Maybe the intellectual elite should have been paying attention instead of enjoying the coziness of their bubble. Calling Trump stupid won't change anything; Trump beat both the Republican and Democratic Parties by being stupid.
Trump is a hammer. And the intellectual elite are nails. Trump was elected to pound nails.
If I described your comment in an accurate way it would be considered a coc violation, so I will just smile at your "spin".
Donald Trump really is the 45th President of the United States. Everyone wants to ignore the Republican primaries. The 2016 Republican primaries wasn't about party talking points or defending the status quo. Trump hammered his Republican opponents.
Trump being elected as a hammer isn't hyperbole. Republican voters chose Trump to be the nominee because he was a hammer. And those defending the status quo were nails. Trump really was elected on the expectation that he would smash the status quo.
The country may, indeed, be tired of Trump. But that shouldn't be 'spun' into believing the country is ready to go back to the status quo.
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Fast forward to the 12 minute mark to watch the asskissing festival.
I find it to be incredibly ridiculous that anyone gives a shit what George Conway has to say about anything. The simple fact that he is married to someone who works in the White House is not enough to make his opinion newsworthy.
He appears to be about 20 times as intelligent as Trump.
Are you working to have Trump replaced as the GOP 2020 candidate? If not, why not?
Haley I could vote for. Trump? I would rather slam my nuts in a car door than vote for that worthless bottom feeder.
You might not be the best judge of that.
When did that become my job?
I don't think she would do it. She doesn't need to do it. If she wanted to be president - and I have no particular information that she does - she would do best to wait until 2024. Her family would probably be happier, too. I know that family is a reason she's not working in the public sector right now.
Well let's look at some facts.
Obama graduated from Harvard law school and was an instructor there, (we can be reasonably sure that Harvard doesn't hire idiots).
Trump graduated from Wharton where he didn't even make the top 15%.
OK, first of all, I was joking, hence the wink. Second, JR and I were talking about George Conway, not Obama. Third, who cares?
It takes no special talent to see that Trump is a moron. There is an actual record of it.
By the way, Trump is on video saying he was first in his class at the U. of Pennsylvania Business School.
There is no record of him being on the Dean's List or receiving any academic recognition when he graduated. Is he lying, or merely "exaggerating" ?
It's weird to me that you need this validation.
I dont need any validation, I know what he is. Trump supporters seem to be the ones struggling with reality.
And like I said, I could vote for her. Just depends on her platform and who she is running against.
I think you do. You're going to a lot of effort to convince other people and try to get them to agree with you for some reason.
Tell me, what is a "perfect" phone call?
I often feel the same way about trump and his supporters.
A few additions to this list:
Drones, corruption, fraud, rape, sexual assault, lying.
You forgot one.
The trump administration is my favorite Martin Scorsese movie.
The mother fucker said he had a "perfect" phone call. A few questions come to mind. 1) what the fuck is a "perfect" phone call? I am pretty sure no person in the history of humanity, until now, has ever described a phone call as being "perfect". What is the criteria for a "perfect" phone call? 2) Who in their right mind even says some shit like that? That is like me saying " I took a perfect shit." What does that even mean? That everything slid out all at once? I didn't have to wipe? I didn't even need to flush?
What in the fuck is this guy even talking about half the time?
Seriously, I need a Trump supporter to explain to me what a "perfect" phone call is.
If you think listening to Trump is bad, you should go and try to READ one of his streams of consciousness. I read one 3 times and still had no fucking clue WTF he was trying to say and I KNOW neither did he.
I do not listen to anything he has to say and I barely skim any of his comments for the sake of my sanity. He is the most illiterate mother fucker to ever poison our politics. I mean, we have had asshole politicians before, but at least they could form complete sentences.
"The Perfect Phone Call"
The question to the answer: What would make his master Putin happy?
I'll take Shitstain thinking for $500 please Alec.
"George Thomas Conway III (born September 2, 1963) is an American attorney. Conway was on the short list of candidates considered by President Donald Trump for United States Solicitor General prior to the nomination in March 2017 of Noel Francisco for that position. He was subsequently considered for assistant attorney general for the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice."
George is just another "Disgruntled" person in society !
From the same wiki article:
Not 'disgruntled', he just saw the writing on the wall.
Too late....he was already passed over !
Poor Disgruntled George !
Not according to YOUR source.
Got a source for your claim?
Oh wait! My bad, I forgot who I was replying to.
Supporting your claims isn't your 'thing'.
Why pull the fake ABC, CNN, or the Adam Schiff Parody stuff ALL the time.
As you say....."Shinny Objects" and "Equal Standards" matter !
See/Read the article your commenting on.
I QUOTED for YOU source.
Are you trying to claim the YOUR quote from that article is accurate but MY quote from that article is not?
What does that mean ?
"Are you trying to claim the YOUR quote from that article is accurate"
No !
My "Quote" wasn't from the "Source".
My "Quote" was from me alone.
My "Source" notes what George was up for and didn't get !
Anything else you need to try at ?
Your quote is hyperlinked to the same wiki article I quoted from. Why lie?
Your source, the wiki article, states that George was up for multiple positions, that he didn't pursue those positions and WHY.
Why, do you have more BS you want to throw at the NT walls?
Your wrong !
My link was to show what George was up for yet didn't get.
My " comment" was my own !
I ……. "Quoted" . ..…. NOTHING !
quote verb
\ ˈkwōt also ˈkōt
quoted; quoting
Definition of quote (Entry 1 of 2)
transitive verb
1
b : to repeat a passage from especially in substantiation or illustration
Duh !
This is a link:
This is you comment, and I QUOTE:
Except for the last sentence, those are not your OWN words, they are QUOTED from the link I posted.
So your out to prove it was the actual "Link" that had those quotes....instead of "I" quoted, like you proclaimed to the all mighty ?
Good Job in proving yourself WRONG in your comments !
Obtuse.
Astute.