The Trumpology series of columns are also published on Capitol Hill Blue where I am a columnist, and are informed by my 40 years of experience as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist. I worked in Michigan as Mason Mental Health Center director and Middleboro, Massachusetts in private practice. Opinions on Trump come from my understanding of psychiatric diagnosis, psychology, and psychopathology. I consider Trump to be a sadistic impulsive malignant narcissist.
Trump Tweeted like the madman he is this morning. His blaming President Obama and attacking Hillary Clinton is no news. He jabs President Xi and The Washington Post in his Twitter tantrum. Nothing shocking there. However, actually naming Putin, not merely Russia, as responsible for “Animal Assad's” chemical attack, that is news. Joy Reid said it was like he said Voldemort out loud.
This is getting major coverage, at least on MSNBC. It will be interesting to see how Fox News covers the story.
The world now awaits to see if Putin has at long last crossed a Trump red line and how the United States will respond. How far will Trump dare to go to incur the wrath of Vlad?
Read the Tweets bottom to top to see how Trump’s anger developed over the course of two hours.
Many dead, including women and children, in mindlessCHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price...
President Xi and I will always be friends, no matter what happens with our dispute on trade. China will take down its Trade Barriers because it is the right thing to do. Taxes will become Reciprocal & a deal will be made on Intellectual Property. Great future for both countries!
The Washington Post is far more fiction than fact. Story after story is made up garbage - more like a poorly written novel than good reporting. Always quoting sources (not names), many of which don’t exist. Story on John Kelly isn’t true, just another hit job!
“The FBI closed the case on Hillary, which was a rigged investigation. They exonerated her even before they ever interviewed her, they never even put her under oath.....” and much more. So true Jesse! @WattersWorld
Trump's reference to the Washington Post (the poorly written newspaper, a criticism from the grammar challenged president) is about ‘When you lose that power’: How John Kelly faded as White House disciplinarian. Not known to have the patience or incliation to read a long article, it's possible Trump never read beyond the photo, and he didn't have to:
EXCERPT: After White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly pressured President Trump last fall to install his top deputy, Kirstjen Nielsen, atop the Department of Homeland Security, the president lost his temper when conservative allies argued that she wasn’t sufficiently hard line on immigration. “You didn’t tell me she was a [expletive] George W. Bush person,” Trump growled.
After Kelly told Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier in a January interview that Trump’s immigration views had not been “fully informed” during the campaign and had since “evolved,” the president berated Kelly in the Oval Office — his shouts so loud they could be heard through the doors.
And less than two weeks ago, Kelly grew so frustrated on the day that Trump fired Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin that Nielsen and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis both tried to calm him and offered pep talks, according to three people with knowledge of the incident.
“I’m out of here, guys,” Kelly said — comments some interpreted as a resignation threat, but according to a senior administration official, he was venting his anger and leaving work an hour or two early to head home.
The recurring and escalating clashes between the president and his chief of staff trace the downward arc of Kelly’s eight months in the White House. Both his credibility and his influence have been severely diminished, administration officials said, a clear decline for the retired four-star Marine Corps general who arrived with a reputation for integrity and a mandate to bring order to a chaotic West Wing.
America's racism and narcissism is the reason why its foreign affairs are a mere projection of it's domestic ills.
EXCERPT: America's malignant racism and narcissism explain why President Donald Trumpcan get away with crass phrases like "America first" and "sh****le countries". Both narcissism and racism account for why the US has cared more about what happened to four Americans in Libya in 2012than it has about Boko Haramin Nigeria or Syrian forces bombing innocent children in Eastern Ghouta. America's racism is at work when the US turns a blind eye to atrocities such as the humanitarian crisis born of Myanmar's ethnic cleansing of some 700,000 Rohingya now in Bangladesh. America's narcissism is why is there such a stark distance between America the ideal superpower, who claims to be "the leader of the free world," and America the narcissistic superpower, who only cares about herself.
Accordingly, one of the more reliable polling average methodologies, at Five Thirty Eight, adjusts Rasmussen’s findings to counter-act the “house effect.” So Friday’s 47 percent Trump approval rating goes into the averages as 42 percent. Another polling average source, Real Clear Politics, does not adjust polls for “house effects,” but similarly shows Rasmussen as being off-kilter (the current RCP average for Trump’s approval ratings is 41.5 percent). In case you want to dismiss Five Thirty Eight as a “liberal” site (despite its against-the-grain predictions in 2016 that Trump had a real chance to win), it should be noted that RCP’s management is quite conservative.
Touting Rasmussen as the only “honest” poll was not enough for Trump, though. In a radio interview today, the president suggested that his job approval number should have been higher:
“A poll just came out now, Rasmussen, it’s now 51,” Trump said. “They say that it’s 51 but add another 7 or 8 points to it. … They don’t want to talk about it, but when they get into the booth they’re going to vote for Trump.”
↓ What we cannot really know, of course, is whether the president really believes what he’s saying, or just wants other people to believe what he’s saying. But the circular nature of his disinformation can be seductive to people who are inclined in his direction anyway. If the mainstream news about him is “fake” and so are the non-Rasmussen polls, then there’s only one source of information you can trust: the man himself. Evil as it is, it’s as good a method as any to keep his troops feeling upbeat and ready to vote.
