Donald Trump reminds me of someone I used to know. Actually he reminds me of four little someones, my children when they were toddlers.
Our president is a big, fat crybaby and the first two weeks of his presidency have been nothing more than an extended temper tantrum. Unfortunately, his Republican enablers like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are no different than the pandering parents who are more afraid that their toddler won’t be their friend than of the destruction facilitated by their lack of spine or character.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Sadly, the Mitch McConnells and Paul Ryans of this world have hitched their star to this puerile idiot. [/pullquote]
How does Trump resemble a toddler? Let me count the ways:
1. Trump, like all toddlers, is a narcissist. He can see the world and the people in it only through the prism of his own needs and desires. It is always about him. Only someone with the maturity of a two-year-old could take the opportunity of a memorial service for fallen CIA members and boast about the (pathetic) size of the crowds at his inaugural, use his Black History Month as an opportunity to continue his vendetta toward the press, or pollute the National Prayer Breakfast with a “prayer” for his reality TV successor Arnold Swarzeneggar.
2. Trump has exceedingly poor impulse control. One of the most notable things about toddlers is that they cannot control their own emotions and actions. On more than one occasion I observed my toddlers doing something they were expressly told not to do (writing on the wall, for example) while simultaneously scolding themselves for doing it. They had enough awareness to recognize that they shouldn’t write on the wall, but not enough self-control to keep themselves from doing so.
Trump routinely shoots his mouth off before putting his brain in gear. Indeed, his Twitter account exists precisely for this purpose. His poor impulse control closely allied to his gargantuan narcissism may impress his followers, many of whom also have the reasoning skills of a toddler, but it appalls the grown ups in the room.
3. Toddlers love bad words. When I disciplined my toddlers or refused to buy them something they wanted, they occasionally reacted by calling me a “poopy head,” which in their minds passed for a witty epithet. Trump behaves the same way, referring to Crooked Hillary and Crazy Bernie or Chuck Schumer’s “fake tears.”and imagining he is regaling us with bon mots.
4. Trump thinks girls have “cooties.” Trump isn’t merely a misogynist; he appears to fear women and degrades them to manage that fear.
Slate quotes those who worked with him on The Apprentice:
“He would talk about the female contestants’ bodies a lot from the control room,” recalls one midlevel producer. “We shot in Trump Tower, the control room was on the seventh floor, and he walked in one day and was talking about a contestant, saying, ‘Her breasts were so much bigger at the casting. Maybe she had her period then.’ He knows he’s mic’d and that 30 people are hearing this, but he didn’t care. That’s kind of him. During the campaign, when he was talking about Megyn Kelly, I thought: He’s obsessed with menstruation.”
It must have been his worst nightmare when Assistant Attorney General Sally Yates and a series of female Federal judges defied him and made him look, yet again, like the mean, petty intellectual pipsqueak that he is.
5. Toddlers hate sharing and Trump does, too. Most toddlers, when first apprised of the concept of sharing, are dumbfounded. Why on earth would they share something in their possession? That appears to be Trump’s attitude, too. He gives surprisingly little to charity and then only when forced by journalists’ investigations to do so.
6. Trump always wants to throw people out. Trump seems to think America is his secret clubhouse and he’s going to build a wall to keep out Mexicans, use immigration policies to keep out Muslims, pull the press credentials of news organizations to keep out those who are “unfair” to him.
7. Trump, like most toddlers, insists that everything is someone else’s fault. It’s the immigrants! It’s the Muslims! It anyone who doesn’t look like us!
Trump is a loser. He has an extraordinarily long list of failures. He’s created more businesses that failed than just about anyone you can name. He inherited millions of dollars and how has only millions of dollars to show for it. He routinely refuses to pay his bills, and considers himself a genius for behaving like a thief. He won’t release his tax returns and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to suspect that’s because they would reveal that HE, and no one else, is responsible for his own failures and might implicate him as a tool of Vladimir Putin.
All of us have an inner toddler. It’s enjoyable to think the world revolves around us; it’s fun to give into every impulse; we love using bad words; many of us still think girls have cooties; we hate sharing and we’d all love to throw out those who aren’t our friends; above all, it’s much more fun to blame our failures on other people than to accept responsibility for them.
The Mitch McConnells and Paul Ryans of this world have hitched their star to this puerile idiot. They think they can control him just like the German political class thought it could control Hitler. They imagine they can get what they want through his petty, vindictive antics, just like the German political class thought it could get what it wanted through what it initially viewed as Hitler’s petty, vindictive antics. Instead, millions of their people died and Germany was leveled to the ground by its enemies.
Like the parents who spoil the toddler, they ended up with a monster, and we will, too, if we don’t move to rein in this petty, vindictive clown with the ego of a two year old.
Trump brags he hasn’t changed since the first grade.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/young-donald-trump-military-school/2016/06/22/f0b3b164-317c-11e6-8758-d58e76e11b12_story.html?utm_term=.5457471d3bb9
At the age of 7 or 8 he punched a music teacher because Trump believed he knew more about music. Oh, and he pelted a neighbor’s baby with rocks.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/donald-trump-menace-american-society-presidential-candidate-or-not
Oh, and his staff is just as childish & bratty. Obama’s staff were told “we won, you lost, STFU” by his transition team and now they sit in the dark during Whitehouse meetings because they don’t know where the light switches are or where the doors exit or where anything is and don’t want to look weak by asking for help.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/chaos-donald-trump-transition/2016/11/15/id/759076/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/05/us/politics/trump-white-house-aides-strategy.html?_r=1
Another good comparison is King Joffrey on Game of Thrones. Completely soulless, nasty, treats the entire world as his to abuse as he sees fit, no empathy or ability to consider the outcomes of his actions, no willingness to listen to anybody who might know more than him.
He scares me. I’m in Northern Ireland and living here, I know first hand how hateful words and hateful actions based solely on religion can create rifts that take generations to heal. I don’t know many (any?) USA citizens personally, but I’d like to think that the Americans who donated to rebuild the mosque in Texas, and those who marched and protested at airports and in cities are the true face of real America, not this bigoted, bullying, misogynistic horror. I’m normally an optimist, but I’m genuinely worried about what is to come unless he is stopped.
It’s part of us, of course, but it’s a part we should try to supress, not glorify like our beloved Orangenfuhrer
Unfortunately its not Don the Con you have to worry about. Its the whole the whole Republican Party (aka The GOP) and his cabinet of Les Deplorables that will really ruin the world. Donnie is already bored with running the country & spends most of the day watching tv & tweeting & signing whatever is put in front of him. And what’s put in front of him is pretty damn awful.
http://thedailybanter.com/2017/01/republicans-evade-ethics-investigations-trump-cabinet/
I’m from Australia. My kids are US citizens as is my extended family who live in the US. Australians have no quibbles with the American people, whom we like and respect. We understand that Trump is an embarrassment for you, and we share many of your fears.
However, I remember the CIA involvement in our federal election in the early 1970s (they didn’t want the “lefty” prime minister … Watch the movie “The Falcon and the Snowman” for a bit of background). Since then, we have had a succession of government leaders who blindly follow US interests. Australia didn’t have the equivalent of the Patriot Act, so Australian soldiers breached the Geneva convention and illegally captured, held and then sent Afghan and Iraqi civilians to Gitmo under a scheme cooked up by US and compliant Australian military leaders. See the story in the Australian Public Advocacy Centre https://www.piac.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/story-1-.pdf
I agree that Trump is bad for US interests because he is acting like a 2 year old. However, that might be a blessing in disguise for some other countries. I think the less the US has to do with resource-rich countries like Australia, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the better these countries, their people and the planet will be. There is a long, sad history of economic and political interference by the US and later, multinational corporations, in many countries.
Please, Donald, take your toys like the satellite ground station used for spying at Pine Gap Australia, and go home.
As far as I can see, the US has ALWAYS put its own interests first in its dealings with Australia and I doubt Obama’s deal with our PM was altruistically motivated. My bet is that Pine Gap (or something similar) was probably used as bargaining chip by our Prime Minister to get out of his political albatross of undocumented people requesting asylum. Given a choice of “If you take these 1,200 undocumented people who arrived in Australia illegally, you can keep your spy station in our country”, I think most US presidents would probably choose to accept the undocumented refugees and keep their southern hemisphere CIA spy station.
Both the American and Australian media are talking about a “deal”. We know that the US side of the deal was to “fix” Australia’s humanitarian and political embarrassment. I haven’t heard what the US is getting in exchange, but I am sure it would have provided massive benefits for the US. I can see an upside in Trump acting like a 2 year old and offending Australia, which has a history of getting the short end of the stick in deals with the US.
This week, one of YK’s classmates told him he should just go kill himself because Trump was going to put all the cripples in a concentration camp and kill them, so he should just save the US taxpayers the money and do it himself. I am seriously considering leaving the country.
One of my grandparents was born in Ireland. If Irish law hasn’t changed since I last looked at it, that makes me eligible to apply for Irish citizenship (I’d looked into it a number of years ago when I was looking at a job transfer for a position in Ireland, but obtaining a work permit as a non citizen proved to be impossible). My children would not be eligible, since the law states that children born before Irish citizenship is obtained aren’t eligible to become Irish citizens themselves. I wonder, however, if I obtain Irish citizenship for myself, if my disabled children might be eligible for some sort of compassionate waiver and be allowed to move with me, should I decide to move, on account of the now very real threat to their safety in the US.
*hugs* Poor kid.
Jeez. What an awful thing. I hope the administration is sensitive enough to take that kid to task for that kind of bullying nonsense.
I’m married to a British citizen and I actually spent some time researching what it would take for me to also become a British citizen … I never thought I’d hate where this country is going so much that I would consider the possibility.
Yes, the school is taking it seriously. This is still California, after all, which is one of the most inclusive and accepting states in the US, but even as liberal as CA is, I’m still starting to fear what’s to come. At this point I don’t think I will leave the country, but I want all my proverbial ducks in a row anyway, should the situation go from bad to worse and I feel the need to leave in order to protect my children.
I’m so sorry. Paperwork needs to be in order.
Jesus, I’m so sorry, that is abominable.
Though I’m not sure Ireland is all that attractive a place to be, either, tbh.
Ireland has its problems, but at the moment it’s more attractive than the US, and it’s my only real option. Until other countries start deeming certain populations in the US as refugees, I can only go where I have some sort of option. As I “only” have a master’s degree, not a Ph.D., my options for academic placements across Europe are pretty much nonexistent. MrC is a PhD holder in one of the hard sciences, but for now, he’s unlikely to want to leave the US unless it gets far, far worse than what we’re predicting. Of course, he’s a while male and a homeowner, so he’s got some advantages a lot of others don’t. Again, I don’t think it’s going to come to leaving, but I want an escape plan in place should it become necessary.
Could you apply to university somewhere? And make him read or watch the handmaid’s tale so he can see an example of escalation?
I don’t really know what to say. I read it and my jaw dropped. I am so sorry, though.
Kind of insulting to my toddler. He’s better at sharing than Der Gropenfuhrer
LOL, yes. I’m totally the overindulgent (older) parent, though I would hardly call my LO spoiled. She has her toddler moments, but she’s nowhere near the monster Trump is. She is capable of remarkable compassion and kindness.
He’s a shocker. And his press secretary didn’t take the time to learn our prime minister’s name. Pity help the world.
He’s clearly messaging his local base at the moment, though I wonder how they feel as a permanent footnote to his fabulous life.
Ever notice how frequently they use adjectives and adverbs? Everything seems to be tremendous or very bad.
Or “yuge,” don’t forget that : )
And he knows all the bigly words too.
He has the best words.
So one of Trump’s most controversial campaign pledges was really just an excuse for the POTUS to play with a lot of Duplo? Well, that makes rather more sense now.
Trump has removed the Joint Chiefs and the Director of National Intelligence from the security council. Oh yeah, and the highest tier of the State Department just quit. So we removed almost all expertise and experience in foreign policy, and Mike Flynn looks like a guy who wants war with Iran. What could possibly go wrong?
Quit or got fired?
My anxiety has increased tenfold in the past two weeks. I am supposed to travel out of the country twice this year, and I fear what might happen to us. If we’re not at war when that comes, anyway.
I’m also livid now with my parents, who both voted Trump, now posting “America’s diversity is our strength” articles on Facebook. Really? So he’s doing exactly what he said he would do, and you’re on the other side now?
This is exactly why I wouldn’t “calm down” after the election.
I’m heading out twice this year as well, once to *Africa*. My parents are not happy about the risks. The logical end result of this order, if we play this out, is ultimately a “No non-Americans enter America, no Americans leave America” policy. I don’t see how we rationalize any other policy, if furriners are so damn threatening to us.
One of the times I’m going abroad is with my in-laws who, spoiler alert: also voted Trump. They’re American citizens now, but they’re also immigrants. They were here with green cards for 30 years. But they can’t understand why my husband and I are upset about recent events.
I last visited USA in 2004 (for a conference). I’m white-in fact, I am so pasty .Morticia Addams white that I’m slightly blue. I have blue eyes and ginger hair. I also have no fingerprints on my left hand because I was a particularly stupid child and at the age of 4, I decided to investigate why the electric bar fire turned a lovely bright orange colour and so I wrapped my chubby little fingers around the bar. Cue various surgeries and skin grafts…
Anyway, I arrived in Orlando for my conference, and was immediately hauled to one side because I couldn’t be finger printed-everyone had to have their index fingers of both hands finger printed, but they couldn’t do mine. The very obvious conclusion that the immigration/security person reached was that I had deliberately wiped out my fingerprints for nefarious purposes. I was obviously a very advanced miniature terrorist to have planned 40 years ago to destroy my prints. It was frightening and humiliating being aggressively questioned by several large men and as a result, I’ve not been back-I’m not a good flyer at the best of times but it really shook me. And now, I’d imagine it’s 10 times worse. If a fat, middle aged ginger white woman gets treated like that, how much worse would it be for someone more melanin-enriched?
Horrible feeling to be totally in their power as well. No doubt you are articulate and well-resourced, but it is still very uncomfortable to be entirely powerless. Your usual arsenal means nothing in that situation.
I also do spare a thought for how poorly paid and trained many of those people are. They may themselves be scared half to death of what they might find or have to deal with, with their minimal training and expertise.
I’m British and I went to New York once for a holiday with a friend, you know as a tourist to see the sites, spend money etc, I have never ever felt less welcome in a country going through passport control at JFK, we’d been flying all night and were tired and the immigration man was the most horrible person I think I’ve ever met, he was absolutely vile to me for the truest heinous crime of having a strand of hair across my face when looking at the facial recognition thing. I’m a white middle class professional woman and he made me feel like **** so I cant imagine how he would have treated someone from the Middle East. . I wanted to get back on the plane and go home! European travel for me ever since, I wouldn’t want to have to go through an American airport ever again! Give me a bored French guy looking you up and down and ushering you through with a barely perceptible flick of the head any day!
For the little it’s worth, and at the risk of being stereotypical, New Yorkers do tend to be like that. Ditto, if to a slightly lesser extent, Chicagoans. It’s part of the culture. I do love certain things about NY, but as the saying goes–wouldn’t want to live there.
Now, here in Texas, you’d probably be greeted by someone who wanted to offer his genuine sympathies that you live somewhere so cold and damp, and where–mind-boggling this, to us Americans and Texans, especially–they serve the beer *shudder* warm , and so he’d want to strongly recommend the nearest place where you could find yourself some decent Tex-Mex and cold, thankyouverymuch, beer. 😀 Probably talk your ear off, but at the least he wouldn’t be unfriendly!
I remember when I came back here from a Europe trip and was standing in line for passport control. I’d been either in the air or on my feet for about the last 24 hours straight and was visibly pregnant. Got to the end of a very long line and mentally groaned, as it looked like another hour+ wait–that is, until one of the customs officers saw me as well as a couple of wheelchair-bound types and opened another station to whisk us through.
I’ve a friend who travels there with work very regularly, and he always flies out of Dublin so you clear security there instead of at the other end. I have to say, once I actually got to the conference hotel, the staff were friendly and helpful, and when some of the delegates realised I’d travelled on my own, they insisted on taking me for dinner each night and escorting me around-very friendly and hospitable people. It’s just the first impression I got was so unpleasant-I know there must be security in place, but to me it seemed to be deliberately aggressive, rude, and confrontational, like they were trying to provoke something. At the time I wore glasses, not contacts, but he insisted I took my glasses off for the photo-I’m really short sighted, I can’t read the big letter at the top of eye chart! He told me to look at the camera-I couldn’t see the damn camera, couldn’t see where he was pointing, so I put my glasses back on to see where to look and he screamed at me so violently to take them off again that I got spat on.
May I just point out that narcissists and sociopaths also share these characteristics.
Yes, I think narcissist and sociopath is a more apt label. Toddlers have the propensity for love and compassion even if they have very little emotional control.
How anyone can still support the guy is totally beyond me. He’s the most inarticulate person I’ve ever had the displeasure of trying to listen to. He conducts himself so unprofessionally it’s embarrassing (my toddlers, for the record, all had better manners than he does) and he’s completely removed the word “presidential” from the office of president. He’s a man baby.
Kinda makes Dubya look good in comparison, though. I never thought I’d say this, but I miss him.
He keeps all his promises. Which other politicians don’t do. Which is weird, given all the lies he told already. Who would have thought that he means and does what he says. Lets hope that at least he learns his geography and knows how to spell, pronounce and where on the globe to find the nation he will nuke. Oh, but than again, hitting the wrong country would only be acceptable collateral damage, I guess? I sincerely hope, that we here in Europe awake in time and don’t vote AfD or Le Penn. But it doesn’t look that good. Bad Merkel, who insisted to let all those terrorist refugees enter Europe instead of letting them starve and freeze to death at the european borders…
Le Pen. With one n.
Lots of other politicians keep their promises as far as they are able. It’s not a genie in a bottle that grants wishes.
Running a huge(YUGE!) country is complicated and opposing political parties requires compromise. It’s called being a grownup. Nobody gets everything they want.
I think anyone running for anything including town council needs to take classes in civics, history and parliamentary procedure before they can run for office.
Upvoted.
Because people in the U.S., a lot of them anyway, have NO idea how complex international trade, treaties or other countries internal politics are. And Trump is one of those ignorant people. He doesn’t know and he is not going to take the time or effort to learn. He is going to damage our trading relationships with our allies and give hard liners in nations that don’t like us or are afriad of us, ammunition to use against us.
There are no easy answers in any of this, but charging in like a bull in a china shop is a sure fire way to ruin years of work on peace treaties, give Russia a foothold with a lot of countries that already had reasons not to trust us, and will give Daesh/ISIS recruiting tools. All while gutting the regulations that helped protect our waterways from mine runoff and heavy metals, and tried to mitigate the effects of farm runoff on our drinking water (ask Toledo and Cleveland how they like the toxic algae blloms) Apparently Trump is multi-talented.
Bannon , his best buddy and adviser meanwhile seems determined to start a war with Iran or China (or both). And most of the Republicans in the Senate don’t seem to care if he burns it all down. The next person who tells me we should give Trump a chance may get a kick in the shins. A chance to do what? Give us global climate change on crack? Take us back to pre-Clean Water Act levels of water pollution (fun fact the Cuyahoga river caught fire 13 times between 1868 and 1969 from industrial run off and fuel spills.)
Sorry for the rant, it’s just he said what he meant to do when he was campaigning and apparently everyone is surprised he is just as rude, sexist, racist and has just as short an attention span as people said he did.
This is something that infuriates me as well – but I wonder, did people not understand these atrocious qualities in him because there was always other candidate(s) to compare against? Now that he is the only in-office-president, there aren’t whatever other false-balance bad qualities to compare against.
On the other hand, the Trump supporters seem to be digging in their heels like anti-vaxxers. My takeaway is that there is no hope for Americans. We will go down in history as monsters.
I think Trumpists are doubling down, but they are the sorest “winners” in history.
So far they still haven’t shut up about the rest of us, at least not on my social media, but they’re defenses are toothless and easily debunked.
I think they are both shocked and dismayed by how many of us resistors there are, how vocal we are, and how motivated we are. Even in my sparsely populated crimson-red state, there are a LOT of us liberals speaking out, calling and contacting our representatives and senators, and making our demands known.
It really seems to be distressing the conservative Republicans I see, and I don’t doubt that a lot of that distress is due to unexamined second thoughts about who they elected.
I agree they are shocked at how many resistors there are. My mom has taken my actions towards resistance (Women’s March, constant calls to my congress people, the protest in Boston last weekend, the promise to run for office as soon as I’m properly prepared) to heart and has since changed her mind on Trump. My sister-in-law, though…she’s digging in her heels and I think it’s largely because she does not want to admit to being wrong. She is the most infuriating person I’ve personally had to deal with in regards to politics, and doesn’t see how many strawman arguments she’s bought into. And she’s feisty, and looks for fights all ending in the same way we’ve seen parachuters do here “life is beautiful, smiles!”. She seriously argued that the protesters don’t remember 9/11 and don’t care about keeping their families safe, when she met with resistance over the Muslim ban. Right, I don’t care about keeping my family safe. That’s why I’m protesting this. Sure. That makes sense. Apparently it’s easier to believe that the protesters don’t want to be safe than to believe that we are saying the ban does not make us safer!
One good example of her type of Trumpism: she doesn’t get the Women’s March, which is fine. Not everyone needs to, whatever. But she bought into this ad from some conservative group that completely ripped off Hillary’s “Our children are watching” ad, showing kids watching footage from the Women’s march and the bad words used there. And she said “Ugh! I’m glad I didn’t have this on the news much, I can’t have my kids listening to this!” COMPLETELY MISSING THAT WE WERE QUOTING TRUMP. And what a difference it makes that these words come from the president instead of Madonna or Ashley Judd! Argh. And meanwhile we have much bigger fish to fry than this! I’m going insane over here. But at least if I end up with a formal diagnosis, I can still get a gun. My god. Can we get a national do over? Please?
“largely because she does not want to admit to being wrong”
I think that is a large part of it for many of them, particularly the women Trumpists I seem to know. Strawman after strawman.
I’ve had some success on a more local level, with at least a few people, regarding things like the right to protest, etc.
Remember, self care is critical to avoid burnout. A friend of mine was having a hard time – we’re all part of a group that is continuously calling and writing congressmen and senators, she marched during the Women’s March, etc. – and I told her it’s okay to drop out for a day or week and just take a break, keep yourself healthy. We will hold your spot for you.
Remember that! There are enough of us that you can take care of yourself and we will hold your place until you get back.
Thank you for that reminder. I definitely can stand to hear it from an internet stranger besides my friends. I am taking some steps for self-care: I un-followed my sister in law on fb so I don’t have to see which strawman she’s buying into today (our conversations on the phone just deal with family stuff). I did take a day off from a local protest this week when it would have required too many sacrifices in a row for my husband/kids. And I’m seeing my therapist regularly.
That self-care sounds great, and so necessary. I found a lot of good tips for avoiding burnout in this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Lifelong-Activist-Change-without-Losing/dp/1590560906
Thanks, I will check that one out!
I figure encouraging fellow resistors counts, too. Every small gesture and act from every small person combines.
It for sure helps. Also, I really like your specific phrase of holding a spot. That speaks to me.
I’m also trying to figure out what the difference was for me vs my family. I used to buy into everything they said in terms of politics, although by the end of high school I saw that their social issue stances in regards to civil rights were just plain bigoted. But it took me 15-16 years to come from there to here, and it feels like it was an overnight change. I feel like a veil was taken off my eyes in regards to what Republicans said they were doing vs actually doing. I just wish I could figure out the turning point, and maybe it would help get the rest of my family to see. On the other hand, they live in a blue state, so I probably should conserve my energy. (But their souls!)
*snort* one of my trump supporting family members posted a meme about how Trump’s not that bad because apparently some high ranking democrat had been a child in Nazi Germany and informed on someone. Because children know what the hell it meant for Mr. Schmidt when they told their scout leader about Mr. Schmidt’s dislike of the Nazis.
The press has some responsibility. A lot of his behaviors were known, by his ghostwriter and people who had done business with him and people who had been harassed or cheated by him) but even when there were articles about anything, no one ever followed up or hammered on anything.
Meanwhile the FBI comes out twice during the campaign period and makes it sound like Hillary is going to jail for crimes against the state when the investigation found exactly Nothing illegal. But for months all we here is EMAILGHAZI!!! And every station is hammering that for 6 months up until the election. I also have friend who “couldn’t ever vote for Hillary” “She’ll get us into a war!”
Yeah a boring middle of the road Dem who is actually to the left of Obama on social issues would have be HORRIBLE…
Meanwhile Mr “I don’t believe in paying my sub-contractors” “Grab them by the pussy” ” How disgusting that someone had to pee during a debate” “My good Friend Putin” has no one following up on anything. Or if they did they wrote about it like it’s an amusing anecdote. And now the morons in the media are “shocked, SHOCKED I tell you” that he is acting like this!
He acted EXACTLY this way (Like a tantrum throwing 2 year old) during the primaries and the election. Except now he is doing it in our name and embarrassing us on the world stage, pissing off our actual allies. WTF was anyone expecting? That he would listen to advisers? When he has never listened to anything he didn’t want to hear? And his best buddy is a white nationalist Brietbart alum?
The problem I’m finding on the resistance side is that too many act like it’s a foregone conclusion that of course we’re seeing the fruits of “give him a chance” already. I mean, we are. But those who voted for him don’t see it that way – they voted for him on the premise that we should give him a chance to make good on his campaign promises, and we’ll see that he didn’t really trample on civil rights or the constitution in the end.
I don’t know if this is me being uppity, but is anyone else finding a pattern where people who live and breathe current events these days always fall into the against Trump camp? That by and large Trump supporters do not follow what’s happening in the world anywhere close to the degree that we are? Because that’s what I see, leading me to put more and more stock into “if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.”
(Speaking of stock, should we be storing money under our mattresses again?? I mean, poor wittle Donald’s insanely rich and powerful friends couldn’t get loans, so he’s using his presidency to help his friends the rich guys. The forgotten people who will get screwed over by those rich guys appear to remain forgotten.)
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/02/donald_trump_is_our_c_student_in_chief.html?google_editors_picks=true
Let’s give the toddler a fifth of vodka, the house for the weekend, and the car keys. It’s okay, he has the local schoolyard bullies as chaperones.
Toddlers learn to modify their behaviour.
Trump will not.
I am terrified. There is no reason for him to learn.
A coworker and I were talking about this the other day…he was saying that it will be interesting to compare photos of Trump now with photos 4 years from now, considering the effect that the heavy burden of Presidency generally has on a person’s looks.
I replied that I don’t think we’ll see much change…Trump does not seem at all bothered by the moral burdens of his new job. I don’t think it will affect him in the slightest.
P.S. I sincerely hope it will be shorter than 4 years. 4 months would be too long.
I’m not sure we won’t have irreparable harm to the world if it goes 4 _weeks_.
He is already making people from outside the U.S think twice about doing business here. My husband works at a university, my daughter is finishing her Bachelors in Environmental Engineering. People are changing their plans for where to do research, deciding NOT to do their graduate studies in the US, deciding not to start joint research projects that would require travel. Many people a re assuming they will NOT get the funding they need for everything from studying water quality in the Great Lakes to effects of climate change on local plant species and insect species.
Friends of my daughter that had started applying for jobs with the EPA, or the NIH or NASA etc are going to private industry instead.
It’s already doing a lot of harm and he and his inner circle are just getting started.
My sister and I had a similar conversation. She thought he would crack under the strain of the job. I said that would require self awareness, conscience, compassion…none of which he possesses.
I think he’ll get frustrated and bored and quit, personally. Whether that will be in a few months I don’t know, but I don’t expect him to go much past half his term.
I think he’ll get impeached. He doesn’t seem to understand being president doesn’t equal being king of America. No concept of how various levels of government work together, the “muslim ban” being a prime example.
The only reason I doubt impeachment is because it is terrifically difficult to pull off. I think he’ll get tired of being massively hated long before the wheels of impeachment justice turn.
But he doesn’t look very healthy, either. I try to refrain from commenting on peoples’ appearance but he IS the oldest person elected to the position, and he’s definitely not at his “fighting weight”. I find it difficult to believe that he finds more time to exercise now, especially with his well-known TV and Twitter addictions.
You might be right. But I’m not sure he’s aware of being massively hated. He lives in a narcissist’s fantasy land where everybody adores him. And he’s surrounded himself with people who’ve figured out adoration is what makes him tick. I think at the start he was running off the adoration of the people – then the self interested politicians and business people figured out how he works. Now he’s got the “adoration” of rich and powerful people, which I imagine is even better in his mind. He doesn’t know these people are only using him. I don’t think his base has really turned on him yet either. Time will tell.
Yes, he does not appear very healthy either.
The only reservations I have against that analysis is his addiction to TV news. He can’t – or at least, doesn’t so far – avoid the constant reports on the massive reaction against him from the population and the media. He’s spinning it as a personal attack against him by the media – and he probably believes that – but he has far less proof or narcissistic supply of any universal adoration than he used to. To recapture that he’d have to go back to stumping and rallies, and he simply does not have the time for that.
I doubt impeachment because the Republicans are drunk on power.
Kudos to McCain and Graham for even saying anything at all, but you need a lot of Republicans to cross over and take a stand, and they REALLY LIKE being able to push through all of the regressive stuff they ever dreamed of despite the will of the majority of voters. He’s not going to be impeached.
After all, it’s not like he had a consensual extramarital blowjob.
I can’t see that choleric loudmouth lasting 4 years either, but I’m not anxious to see that vice president become president, either. I’d rather have Paul Ryan and I don’t much like *him* either.
4 weeks, anyone?
I’ve been saying to friends that listening to Trump is listening to a bright four-year-old. They don’t understand scale. They don’t understand complication. Everything they do is great.
I have a feeling your own children weren’t this bad when they were toddlers. I may be viewing my own children through mom goggles, but even when they were toddlers, they always expressed a desire to please, to make friends, and to learn. They expressed remorse when the implications of their selfishness were pointed to them. And possibly because my oldest and dearest friend is transgender, they never expressed a disdain for the opposite sex.
Upvoted. Most toddlers I know want to please.
My now 9 years old said some weeks ago, that he doesn’t want to be famous when he is older. I asked why. He said, the risk of him turning bad when famous was too great. I asked, but do you think of yourself as somehow bad? He said, no, but you don’t know what you can turn into later in life, or do you think Trump, as a child was bad already?? Well, I would have wanted to reply that yes, I think he was probably also a “bad boy” when he was a kid. But I couldn’t reply anything to that.
My seven year old told me the other day that he wants to bake a cake for Donald Trump on his birthday. Because, he reasons, if we are nice to him maybe he will learn to be nice to others. The true irony, of course, is that my 7-year-old’s thought process is far more mature and empathetic than Trump’s thought process towards anyone has ever been, and ever will be.
Agreed. My kids even as two year olds were more compassionate than this man.
They say children younger than 2 or 3 can’t develop empathy, but I remember quite clearly my son before he could even talk being distressed when another child or baby would cry. He’d go up to them and hug them (or in the case of babies, he’d crouch down to their carseat carrier). I was forever having to tell him not to touch babies. He just wanted to make everyone feel better.
There’s a scene in the movie “Cabaret” where the Count says “the Nazis will control the communists and we will control the NAZIS”. Followed by “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”.
Then he is asked “still think you can control them?”.
He shruges.
A local musical group (Tribe in SF, good guys) re-booted Cabaret. The decision was made before the election, but the run was after, and they had every performance sold out.