Today's Trumpian tale of two tabloids

 By Hal Brown

Someone walking by news kiosks in New York today might mistake the cover page (below) for the Murdoch owned New York Post for it's competitor, the liberal Daily News:

I found out where the Post got the photo of Trump holding a bat (here). It was taken while was participating in a Made in America event with companies featuring their products in the Blue Room of the White House in July, 2017.

Both covers featured the embattled former president but the Post says he's deranged and "bat hit crazy" while the New York Daily News "merely" says he's dangerous. 

I would like to have been in the Post newsroom to see if anyone brought up the idea of spelling out the word "shit" thus making the cover look something like this and hear the pro and con arguments.

Click above to enlarge

The Daily News has a self-satisfied slightly sneering Trump on their cover today. They are known for their Trump covers which are far harsher:

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I don't know what to call the facial expression on the baseball bat holding Trump.

Here's the featured NY Post editorial.

I won't summarize the article (click above to read it) but will note it has one choice reference that anti-Trumpers have been using for years, saying that the emperor has no clothes (left).

Update Sat, afternoon: In Raw Story today Tom Boggioni highlighted the same reference here:

I note that there are two meanings of the word "won't" shown in the NY Post title but not in the article itself. "Won't" can mean a prediction about something that won't occur in the future. Alternately, it can be a word suggesting in this context that Trump can decide whether to change or not. Defining it this way misses the fact that Trump, being Trump, can't change.

Another way to put this is that Trump won't change because he can't change.

No matter how self-defeating, acting on his impulses to lash out at those he is fighting with words that go beyond intemperate to insane he is unable to control himself. 

Rather than rant and rave out loud or stew in his boiling juices in silent rage like a more-or-less normal person who feels their world crashing down around them, he vents his spleen though his fingertips when he types (now often in all caps) on Truth Social. 

Wait for Waco today when we'll see video clips of his doing it with his maniac mouth. (More on Waco rally.)

Who would have predicted that the liberal media and the right-wing media would both use words like crazy, deranged and unhinged to describe Donald Trump? For example, this is how HUFFPOST titled their article about the Post editorial today: 

‘Unhinged’: Trump Ripped In Withering Editorial From Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post

The previously pro-Trump tabloid offered some harsh truths for Trump supporters.

Considering that nothing makes it into a Rupert Murdoch owned publication as an editorial about Trump, whether it's The NY Post or The Wall Street Journal, that doesn't have the bosses approval. Fox News, which has far more influence with Republican voters than Murdoch's American newspapers, doesn't air editorials, at least not the way newspapers regularly do.

Now it is a wait and see game to see whether Murdoch forces the likes of Tucker Carlson so be ordered to throw Trump out the window or be defenestrated themselves.

You read it here.

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In death at 92 Portland's iconic drag queen Darcelle XV gets headline coverage in local news. Take that anti-woke warriors..

 By Hal Brown

If you aren't familiar with Portland, Oregon and its LGBTQ+ scene you may not know who Darcelle XV is so you may want to look at Wikipedia here.

CC 2.0 on Wikipedia

I am often overwhelmed and always dismayed by the news about the anti-woke warriors like Ron DeSantis who thinks drag represents a toxin riskier than ricin, the book burners, and people like this.

Click above to read article

These feelings are mitigated at times when I realize that there are really good people holding the line against the anti-woke mob. I am hopeful when I read an article like this, coincidentally published in Salon today: 

The GOP is becoming more unhinged about LGBTQ people — which will only make them more unpopular

New research shows most Americans side with RuPaul and Kevin Bacon against Christian nationalists

While Portland's Darcelle XV dying isn't a call for celebration, living a full and fulfilling life until the age of 92 is.

This was in my email last night:

Click above to enlarge

I looked at the local TV news websites this morning and noted that this story was the top story on two of the three of them. One was KATU, a station owned by the far-right Sinclair corporation.

Click above to read article

This is what KGW looked like:

Click above to read article

This a morning it wasn't the lead on KOIN online but it might have been when it was posted late last night:

Click above to read article

This is a Google News search for Darcelle XV:

Click above to enlarge image. 

Before yesterday Darcelle XV was featured in these articles:

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Here's the Gigantic Brewing story:

Click link for story, click above to enlarge image.

All of this news coverage highlights the fact that here in progressive Portland by far the majority of us, including those in our newsrooms, are woke. Whether we are a member of the LGBTQ+ community or not we are proud to be wonderfully woke.

I feel for progressive in red states and experience a weird tinge of something akin to guilt, but not really guilt, that I live where I do. I have friends in Florida who moved there decades ago never anticipating what it would become, and like many in similar situations there and in other irredeemably red states, can't relocate to a blue state.

Addendum:

Click above to read article

Trump and DeSantis are no P.T. Barnums but they do play people for suckers

 By Hal Brown

Click above to enlarge image

Link to article in The Independent | HUFFPOST article

With American democracy at stake in the 2024 election the kind of silliness shown above would be a mere sideshow one wouldn't really mind missing if you came late for actual circus. 

Some of my fond childhood memories are of my parents taking my sister and me to the the amazing Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey circus at Madison Square Garden include not only watching the great clown Emmett Kelly, the trapeze artists, the elephant parade, and lion and tiger tamers but also going to the basement to see the sideshow attractions. I remember my parents paid a quarter for the giant to hand me one on his enormous rings.

This being said, it is hard not to be intrigued by Trump's juvenile but successful obsession with calling his adversaries silly names. However, is Trump the 21st century political P.T. Barnum?

Most people, myself included, didn't know that the man frequently quoted as saying that there's a sucker born every minute (no proof he really said this) was also a politician.

Barnum served two terms in the Connecticut legislature in 1865 as a Republican. He was also the mayor of Bridgeport. (More on his life in politics.)

Even though he switched parties from Democratic to Republican he'd be considered a liberal Democrat today:

Barnum was significantly involved in politics. He mainly focused on race, slavery, and sectionalism in the period leading up to the American Civil War. He opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which supported slavery, so he left the Democratic Party which endorsed slavery and became part of the new anti-slavery Republican Party.

As a showman he was known for perpetrating hoaxes:

In 1842 Barnum introduced his first major hoax: a creature with the body of a monkey and the tail of a fish known as the "Feejee" mermaid. He leased it from fellow museum owner Moses Kimball of Boston who became his friend, confidant, and collaborator. Barnum justified his hoaxes by saying that they were advertisements to draw attention to the museum. "I don't believe in duping the public", he said, "but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them."

If you want to call him a liar rather than a hoaxer one could compare him to Trump and DeSantis. Barnum would certainly make a better president than either of these two.

Nixon was brought down by tapes. It could happen to Trump

 By Hal Brown

The original Nixon White House tape recorder is shown in an undated handout photo. (National Archives via AP)

One word stood out in this Salon article:

Judge orders Trump lawyer to reveal evidence in “criminal scheme” — and there may be tapes: report

Judge rules Trump duped his own lawyers in Mar-a-Lago case, orders attorney to testify and turn over transcriptions

Howell also ordered Corcoran to turn over records related to what she described as Trump's alleged "criminal scheme," according to the report. The report also revealed that Corcoran may have recorded his discussions with Trump, noting that the records include "handwritten notes, invoices and transcriptions of personal audio recordings."

Corcoran is the Trump lawyer that has been order to testify and turn over documents.

Here's more from Salon:

Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman said the evidence "could be absolutely dynamite."

"It appears that Corcoran took notes & maybe RECORDED Trump, his client (sense a pattern of mistrust by Trump lawyers?)," Litman tweeted. "If doc or taped evid shows Trump knows the subpoena is false, that is killer."

Note that the word "recorded" is in all caps.

Here's another article:

Prosecutors have said they have reason to believe efforts were made to "obstruct" their investigation. 

They want to ask Corcoran about an alleged call he had with Trump on June 24, 2022, around the time investigators were seeking to secure documents at Trump's home and video surveillance tapes of Mar-a-Lago, CBS News reported.

"Those could be very incriminating phone calls by themselves," Cunningham said. "If that material is handed over, that could be by itself enough to indict [Trump], quite possibly enough to send him to prison."

The word recorded and references to recordings immediately brought to mind the Nixon Oval Office tapes.

Hopefully everyone reading this is old enough to remember what they were or familiar with the history of Watergate. 

The release of the tape, 18 minute gap notwithstanding, led to this:

and eventually to this:

There was one recording of Trump that we know of that could have prevented him from becoming president in the first place. I don't need to reference it because I am not sure how many asterisks I should use in the word that showed how he objectified women. 

Of course nobody uses tapes these digital days, but you get the idea. It is possible that the recording from attorney Corcoran added to the recording Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (which you can lister to here) is a different case end up leading to the beginning of the end for Donald Trump.

One thing is for certain, if he goes down and ends up being given jail time, he won't be leaving Mar-a-Lago on a Marine helicopter (designated as Marine One if the president is onboard). 

Venomous GOP House committee chair was just amazingly honest

 By Hal Brown

Update, new article in Salon blasts NY Times writers: N.Y. Times offers grotesque whitewash of Rep. James Comer, GOP's new attack dog

Lengthy profile of Oversight Committee chair James Comer is loaded with folksy details — but misses the real story

-------------------

There is a short Salon article by Amanda Marcotte. In it she refers to James Comer, the Kentucky member of the House, as the "newly crowned chair of the House Oversight Committee" hence my illustration above.

.

The first half of the article before Marcotte went into what is in the title struck me as amazing because it describes the candor and forthrightness of a Republican who is only recently in the public eye, or at least in the eyes of people who follow politics closely.

"You know, the customer's always right."

Rep. James Comer gave this juicy quote to Jonathan Swan and Luke Broadwater for their New York Times profile of the Kentucky Republican. He was explaining his affection for right-wing conspiracy theories. The "customer[s]" in this case, as Swan and Broadwater write, are the "vengeful, hard-right voters" who "propelled Comer to stardom" in the GOP.

It's quite an admission from the newly crowned chair of the House Oversight Committee. When asked why he is so intent on using his powers, as Swan and Broadwater write, "to investigate unhinged claims about President Biden and Democrats," Comer could have played political word games, pretending either to take these conspiracy theories more seriously than he actually does. He could have feigned outrage at the suggestion that his motives are anything less than honorable. Instead, Comer seems unconcerned to be seen, to the readers of the New York Times anyway, as a huckster for disinformation scraped out of the darkest corners of the internet.

"They don't know that it's QAnon," he even told Swan and Broadwater, "but it's QAnon stuff."

Former senior Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer tweeted that “Jim Comer has a Trumpian blend of incompetence and malice”. Comer is described as the an "aggressive promoter of sinister-sounding claims about the president and his family" in The New York Times. The Times also says he "has gone from being a favorite Republican among Democrats in Kentucky’s Legislature to a commander of the G.O.P. war machine in Congress."

Credit...This is from the Times article:

Appearing on Fox News in January, Mr. Comer implied, without evidence, that there was a connection between Mr. Biden improperly holding on to classified documents when he was a private citizen and his son, Hunter, receiving a diamond from a Chinese tycoon. In another segment Mr. Comer lamented that Beau Biden, the president’s other son, who died of cancer in 2015, was never investigated.

His embrace of such statements reflects how Mr. Comer, who voted to certify Mr. Biden’s victory and was a favorite among Democrats in Kentucky’s Legislature, has transformed himself to command the Republican war machine in Congress — becoming a high-profile example of what it takes to rise and thrive in the Fox News-fed MAGA universe.

It also underscores the cutthroat instincts of Mr. Comer, who presents himself as an affable country boy of limited abilities, but who has proved to be a methodical and transactional political operator, willing to go to great lengths to crush his adversaries.

During his campaign for governor in 2015, facing allegations of abuse from an ex-girlfriend who also said he had taken her to get an abortion, Mr. Comer worked to discredit a blogger reporting on the claims and a campaign rival he believed was behind them, leaking private emails between the two. Mr. Comer denied the woman’s charges but lost the race anyway.

The honesty shown in the interview with Swan and Broadwater is surprising, but it also may be an example of his incompetence. Why would he want to put it out there that he is deliberately manipulating people who voted him into office with lies? Whoever runs against him in the future would be stupid if they didn't use this against him.

What are we to make about how honest he was with Jonathan Karl and Luke Broadwater interviewing him for a newspaper he'd probably refer to as a purveyor of fake news? Does he assume that none of the Kentuckians who elected him four times to represent them will ever read it? After all he basically just called them ignoramuses. 

Two decades before John Gartner, writing about Trump, made us aware of what a malignant narcissist was the term was used on the TV show Luther

 By Hal Brown

Above: Episode One

I was a psychotherapist for 40 years but hadn't learned what a malignant narcissist was until John D. Gartner came along.

Click above to read USA Today article

I've been rewatching the TV series "Luther" and I was surprised that the term was used both in episode one and in episode two. This was aired in 2010, well before so many people learned what malignant narcissism was. Thanks to John Gartner, the founder of Duty to Warn, I learned about how Trump epitomized the syndrome. 

Alice Morgan is the genius killer who has become Luther's nemesis. Their relationship reminds me of the complex love/hate relationship between Eve and Villanelle in Killing Eve.

There's a new Luther movie out but I thought I'd watch the series again before watching it. I decided to look up "Luther Alice Malignant Narcissist" and came up with these:

Click above to enlarge

This is from Wikipedia (emphasis added):

Alice Morgan, played by Ruth Wilson,is a research scientist with a genius-level IQ. When we first meet her, Alice has murdered her parents – and their dog – in such a calculated fashion, that not even Luther is able to prove her guilt, of which he is absolutely certain. Alice's core belief, that nothing in life ultimately matters, comes into direct conflict with Luther's own beliefs. She frequently insinuates herself into Luther's professional and personal life, both as an enemy and ally, with behaviours ranging from stalking him and those close to him, to helping him avoid criminal prosecution. She also provides Luther with a unique insight into the criminal mind. Luther describes Alice as a malignant narcissist.

This is from the FanDom website:

Note the sentence I have highlighted:

Alice is equal parts genius, psychopath, and malignant narcissist.

Remove the word genius and it would apply to Donald Trump.

In fact the definition of malignant narcissism is that it combines psychopathy with extreme narcissism. I think Fromm should have called it psychopathic narcissism for clarity but this is just a quibble.

If you look up my name and malignant narcissism on DuckDuckGo this is the article on the top of the search page. 

This is just one of the many articles I wrote about Trump being a malignant narcissist and his other psychopathologies.

The word was never in common usage even though prominent social psychologist Erich Fromm coined it in 1964. Then Trump came along. John Gartner first, and then other mental health professionals writing about Trump, used it as did others describing Donald Trump's personality. George Conway is one example of someone who wasn't a psychotherapist who helped make the public aware of how Trump was the epitome of the syndrome:

Click above to read article

Alice Gordon, and Villanelle are malignant narcissists but they are charming and fascinating. If they were real people I can see being friends with them assuming I wasn't on their hit list. 

I'd sooner be friends with Beezlebub than with Donald Trump. At least Beelzebub might be able to teach me to fly and might be able to cook me a gourmet meal.

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Trump should have interpreter to tell us that what he says isn't what he means

 By Hal Brown

When someone posts on social medias in all caps it is considered to be the same thing as shouting. Trump's call to his followers to protest if he's arrested made the news and not, for him, in a good way. This was interpreted as his instructing his followers to engage in violent protests. 

Anyone with any common sense wanting to help Trump weather the coming storm of legal entanglements knows that violent protests on his behalf will turn at least some sentiment among his less zealous supporters against him.

Considering what occurred after his January 6th speech there's no way he couldn't have known the power he has to incite violence with his words.

Not long after the media pointed this out the walk-back from others in the GOP and ardent Trump supporters began. Pence told Jonathan Karl that the American people know they should protest in a peaceful and lawful manner. 

McCarthy echoed this. So did Alex Jones:

Ali Alexander, who as an organizer of the “Stop the Steal” movement staged rallies to promote Trump’s baseless claims that Democrats stole the 2020 election from him, warned Trump supporters that they would be "jailed or worse” if they protested in New York City.

“You have no liberty or rights there,” he tweeted.

One of Alexander’s allies in the “Stop the Steal” campaign was conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who amplified the election fraud claims on his Infowars show. Alexander posted that he had spoken to Jones and said that neither of them would be protesting this time around. Reference

None of these interpretations of what a call to protest means comes from Trump, the one person who could have influenced the very people who could assure that protests, if any, were peaceful. 

Here's one reply posted to Trump's Truth Social post (clicking below will enlarge but not go to Trump Social):

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The simple fact, as shown in the post above, is that there are people who may want to express their support of him in a violent manner. These are a group of people who don't look at Jan. 6th as a total failure. Rather they look at it as a success even though it was a failed coup that they think but for the traitor Mike Pence almost succeeded. 

Trump never apologizes, never reverses a position that may disadvantage him, never admits he was wrong about anything. It's been pointed out the he could have urged supporters to peacefully protest in his posts, but really, can you see him even considering that? There no way he'd go back and post "ops, I really meant to use the word peacefully".

On MSNBC Ali Vitali said they are trying to put Trump's comments through a filter that doesn't actually exist. She made my point. I see the filter as really being an interpretation device. What comes out of Trump's screaming mouth (shown in DonkeyHotey's often reposted caricature) for his own sake should be filtered. 

Trump's worst enemy is his unfiltered brain. That brain is our friend. It's also a friend to Ron DeSantis who would be a more difficult candidate to defeat if he wins the GOP primary.

Update:

On the other hand you have stories like this:

Right-wing broadcaster calls for Barack Obama and others to be executed if Trump is arrested

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Predictions of Trump's legal downfall could be a big nothing burger, but what if it's the opposite?

 Predictions of Trump's legal downfall could be a big nothing burger, but what if it's the opposite? 

What if the Trump indictment proves to be a giant everything burger with all the fixings?

By Hal Brown

Trump not only has nicknames for just about everyone he wants to disparage. He also is referred to in numerous ways by his enemies when they post comments about him on progressive websites. Here's an exhaustive list of both, obviously out of date since it's from 2020.

The man with many names has apparently decided that all-caps is the way to go on his Truth Social posts, leaving no other way to scream his outrage unless the techies working there decide to add formatting so he can add bold or enlarge the font. Click below to enlarge without going to Truth Social:

If these posts are any indication, there's at least one person who doesn't think the legal machinations happening behind the scenes represent a big nothing burger. 

Progressive pundits are handling the prospect that the coming Stormy Daniels case ending up with an indictment gingerly with a lot of equivocation and the most common word you hear and read is "if".

Progressives and anti-Trumpers of any stripe by and large don't want to engage in wishful thinking by getting their hopes up in anticipation lest nothing come of this. After all, Trump has avoided serious consequences for his misdeeds so many times in the past that one runs out of metaphors and similes to describe what he's like in this regard. For example fill in the blank here: he's been as slippery and slimy as a __________.

To the vast majority of us, engaging in an illegal act involving $130,000 and an adult film star, and getting caught would scare the living crap out of us. Still, many pundits tending to writing this off  or minimizes this because ,not only of Trump's history of avoiding having his life seriously disrupted by his lawlessness, but because even though he lies about how much money he has, for a multi-millionaire $130,000 is chump change.

My own view is a bit more nuanced. I am a hard and fast disbeliever in karma, that is, as in Hinduism and Buddhism the belief that the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence is viewed as deciding their fate in future existences. 

If I did believe in karma I would be thinking how fitting it would be to see that the first domino to fall in Trump's delicious destruction would be something involving his behavior with a woman. Of all the women who could start this process I'll be happy if it is the one he once thought was gorgeous and now calls "horseface". 

I wrote Clinton: It depends on the meaning of 'is", while Trump's basic defense re. Stormy depends on the meaning of the word "affair" and see that Crooks and Liars also published the same thing in 'Sleazebag': Trump Reacts To Stormy Daniels Meeting With Prosecutors -Lumpy didn't get much sleep last night.

So, if the former President hadn't seen her in 18 years, what was the $130,000 payment in 2016 for? And he keeps using the word "affair" when it was allegedly a one-time sexual encounter. And the sexual (alleged!) encounter occurred in 2006. This feels like a badly scripted soap opera.

Stormy Daniels humorously noted that what happened could only be considered an affair in Trump's mind (click to see on Twitter or below to enlarge image without going to Twitter):

I will add, just because it bears repeating, is that Stormy called this the worst 90 seconds of her life.

I am always in quest of really good hamburgers. 

While I don't want to get my hopes up too high, there is mounting evidence that realistically one or another case against Trump will be the first rock to fall leading to a legal avalanche that will bury Trump.

I admire Stormy Daniels. She has astutely handled the fame that Donald Trump handed her on a golden platter. She avoided becoming a political pawn and made career moves which proved she was anything but a run-of-the-mill adult film performer.

Full disclosure: Stormy Daniels is one of the 123 people I follow on Twitter:

Perhaps she'll retweet this:

Addendum

Even if Trump is indicted and eventually this all turns out to be a plate of beans without a juicy burger underneath Trump will experience the following:

"Look, Jake (Tapper), he's very anxious about the prospect of being indicted for a couple of reasons," she began. "Yes, two things can be true at once: he is aware that there are reasons to believe this could help him politically, we have heard a lot about this morning already, but he does not want to face getting arrested, which is what happens when you get indicted."

"You get fingerprinted, you get brought in, you have to ask for bail," she elaborated. "None of that is something that he's excited about." on CNN's"State of the Union," the New York Times' Maggie Haberman (story).

This is what Chris Cristie said here:

"But the vision of a former president of the United States being processed, fingerprinted, mug shot," he added. "You know, what else do you expect Trump to say, as I said to [George Stephanopoulos] last week, than to say it helps his campaign? But being indicted, I don't think it ever helps anybody.

For a change, Marjorie Taylor Greene is a voice of restraint on her Twitter page (here):

Clicking above will enlarge image but not go to Twitter.

About the blog:

I am posting these essays on both Booksie and Medium. It is gratifying and motivating to know people read what I write. When I was banned from Daily Kos and switched only to posting my opinion writing on my online readership dropped significantly. Now it averages around 1500 a week at this address, but by posting the same story on two new platforms there are additional readers.

Please scroll down to the comments link and let readers know what you think. Sharing on social media, also through the links below, is appreciated. New to the blog, note that the archives are on the very bottom of the screen.