The Madness of King Donald

As the worst year in at least most of our lifetimes thankfully draws to an end, so does the abominable administration of our wannabe king Donald J Trump, but not without the maximum drama befitting a trashy TV reality show, White House edition! Without the physiologic excuse (porphyria) of King George III, Trump’s delusions of grandeur and electoral omnipotence are the predictable results of his lifelong blatant personality disorders (which would have completely disqualified any other presidential candidate!). Since the election we have been witnessing in real time his progressive decompensation under the crushing psychological stress of having decisively lost the election he had apparently convinced himself as well as his cult followers that he could not possibly lose without the massive voter fraud excuse he had concocted far in advance as a political insurance policy, and which he has probably even deluded himself into believing!

It is obviously not enough for Trump to trash our democracy and embarrass our country on the world stage with his and his cronies’ unprecedented, appalling and desperate but doomed attempts to overturn the legitimate election results by any means possible, no matter how destructive and divisive. It is clear that he will NEVER concede that he legitimately lost the election, partly because on some level he probably actually believes he won, thereby tragically and irrevocably breaking the chain of peaceful and orderly transitions of power, which has until now remained intact since the beginning of our country as a cornerstone of our great democratic experiment.

Now in the waning weeks of his reign, by far the most corrupt and perhaps the most incompetent in American history, DT is staring down both the imminent loss of his most powerful and protected position and new vulnerability to civil and criminal legal threats. At least equally abhorrent to him are the inevitable historical epithet of loser and the loss of the automatic constant attention and spotlight he absolutely craves. As a result, like a cornered animal, Trump is probably more dangerous now than ever! Still completely ignoring the worsening raging pandemic which he personally fueled through his actions and inactions, between his frequent golf games he is thrashing around in a desperate attempt to continue to command attention and demonstrate his remaining power to everyone. Unfortunately for the country, this has now taken the form of petulantly vetoing the defense authorization bill (which will hopefully be quickly overridden and make him look even weaker), and even more shockingly, threatening to veto the Covid relief bill which took months to produce and the budget bill to which it is attached! His flimsy excuse of demanding larger relief checks for people after staying out of the long painful legislative negotiation process and railing against spending that his own administration requested in the budget is absurd. It remains unclear whether Trump’s motivation to toss these hand grenades into his own administration is to just flaunt his power and sow as much chaos as possible in order to garner attention and inflate his ego, to get back at McConnell and other Republicans who finally acknowledged Biden’s legitimacy, to worsen economic conditions in the country for his successor to have to deal with, or a combination of these and possibly other grotesque motivations. Even if he ends up signing it, this has already had the effect of actually hurting millions of Americans, both Democrat and Republican, due to delays in getting checks to people and implementing other relief measures. And there is the real possibility of a disastrous government shutdown within the next two days if the budget or an emergency extension is not signed! It is hard to imagine how even the Fox expert spin machine could make Trump look good for doing all of that damage! The only upsides to this (and I’m not sure whether it’s worth it) are to throw the GOP into turmoil and possibly damage the two Senate candidates in the Georgia runoff election (fingers crossed!!), as well as to hopefully peel off a few percent of Trump supporters by showing him for the pathetic monster he is. I would love to be a fly on the wall in McConnell’s office these days!

Then there is also the issue of the disgustingly corrupt pardons for Manafort, Stone, Kushner Senior and many others, including convicted war criminals and murderers, not to mention the expected upcoming pardons for his own family members and possibly himself! One can only hope that these also turn off at least a small percentage of his heretofore loyal followers! I wonder if there will be any more polls of Trump’s approval rating before he goes.

With only a few weeks left to go, Trump still has the potential to cause additional and possibly catastrophic damage to both this country and the world, but hopefully he will have the awareness to realize that the more damage he does now, the less likely he would be able to mount a successful 2024 run, which I suspect would most likely not succeed in any case despite his current tight hold on his base. Unfortunately we’re not talking about a rational person who is even capable of long term strategizing, and if he ever thinks he has nothing more to lose, there is no telling what he might do to get even more historical notoriety on his way out the door! Seatbelts fastened and fingers crossed everyone!!