Hal Brown's Substack (fomerly Hal Brown's Blog)

August 27, 2025

Cabinet meeting and Truth Social Post proves that Trump is just plain weird, as if we need any more proof. By Hal M. Brown

I read this article in RawStory when there were only 31 comments.

It is about his ranting in a Truth Social post (below) which he made at 10:56 last night about Seth Meyer’s show being renewed.

Some of the comments to the RawStory article:

Oh go to bed you moron, and if you HAVE to get up the next morning, do your effing job, yeh, the one you were voted in to do.
"He has no ratings, talent or intelligence and the personality of an insecure child."
The Orange slob just described himself perfectly..
So, the insecure child has an issue with NBC??? donnie has absolutely no sense of self awareness.
The wannabe king has spoken!
Trump is a mentally and physically sick monster who needs to be ignored and stopped. Trump must be removed. He is destroying all aspects of our nation and freedom. Get rid of Trump now. Congress is on vacation, but Trump and his cabinet are still working to destroy the quality of life of the average American. Trump has not right to tell any of us what to watch on TV. This fascist takeover must be stopped.

Here’s another:

I read over the spot-on comments and, with nothing to add, I decided to use my go-to free AI illustation program, Perchance, to post some computer generated images of Trump looking crazy. You can see them on the top of this page.

Now, thank you for paying attention to the following matter.

Consider what he said at the conclusion of a three hour staff meeting. It made the news because of all the members of his cabinet who blew words of praise on him like they were blowing on dying embers trying to light a fire to stay warm on a freezing cold night (read NYT's Maggie Haberman floored as Trump Cabinet gets 'endurance test' to 'praise him').

Trump said Gavin Newsom was an "incompetent governor" because he had not welcomed a military takeover of cities. He went on to say the following:

"I know him very well. He's incompetent. He's a nice guy, looks good. He's got some strange hand action going on. I don't know what the hell is his problem. It's a little weird to be honest, a little something shaky going on there."

Trump may have hands on his mind since there have been reports that there is something wrong with his own hands. Who the hell knows what he is referring to when he says something is a little weird with Newsom.

How in the holy Hell can people who are most likely sane sit through a Cabinet meeting like yesterday’s and not realize how weird Trump is. How can Trump think that these people believe what they are saying? How can Trump feel good about being praised by people he knows are trying to outdo each other with the over-the-top raptures about his gloriousness. Can he not know that they are well aware of the fact that their job depends on how well they wax poetically about how great he is.

The following is from the NY Times (subscription) article “What, Exactly, Was That Cabinet Meeting?” (Kudos to the photographer and editor for the photo.)

The article by Katie Smith begins:

What do you get for a president who commands everybody’s attention, all of the time?
For members of President Trump’s cabinet on Tuesday, the answer was apparently this: a televised meeting at the White House that lasted almost half the workday.
In front of a wall of cameras, the old “Apprentice” host offered a clear window into the way he was running his administration, starting with an ego that appeared to need frequent feeding, and blustery stamina: “This has never been done before,” the president said at one point, in between calling on secretaries to speak and marveling over the waiting reporters’ abilities to hold microphones and cameras aloft for several hours.
There in the Cabinet Room — which is starting to take on the gilded-cage look of Mr. Trump’s Oval Office — all of the president’s men and women took their turns, each working a little bit harder than the last to offer Mr. Trump praise and to assure him that they were working to tackle his long list of grievances.

I dont know which member of the Cabinet won the contest made famous by the Seinfeld episode with that title by holding off the longest before they released their load of praise on their master.

Trump got the coverage he wanted. For him it doesn’t matter that networks like CNN (below) focused on how ludicrous it was that so much time was spent lavishing praise on him.

When Trump has succumbed to the inevitable permanent dirt nap, perhaps we’ll find out what the Cabinet members were thinking during this and other Cabinet meetings.

I wonder how many will use the word “weird” or admit that they were thinking something along the lines of …

… when they were sitting there just wishing the meeting would end. Some with bladder control problems might admit they had to wear Depends to these interminable meetings.

This being said, with all the questions about Trump’s physical health ( see article) and considering his age, his prostate must be in good condition. Either he can go without peeing a lot longer than most men his and my age, or he’s wearing Depends.

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August 26, 2025

The lessons of history tell us one thing: it CAN happen HERE. By Hal M. Brown

I opened RawStory (you can see that it was at 5:28AM on the top of the screenshot) and was struck by the first six words in the title of the article that happened to be on the top of the page. It is shown above with my highlight.

I glanced at the article (here) but didn’t need to know that the following was what it was about to decide what to write about today:

The Trump administration has been persistent in its efforts to deport Kilmer Abrego Garcia, a migrant previously deported to El Salvador without charge due to an “administrative error,” and on Monday, defiantly violated a federal judge’s order as it pertains to the case, according to new court documents.

The story could have been about any case where Trump and his henchmen demonstrated that a judge’s order which was meant to stop them from doing anything they wanted to do wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.

Ask yourself this:

It is obvious that Trump is testing just how much he can get away with, whether someone is as famous as John Bolton or as newly famous like Kilmer Abrego Garcia.

Grand juries issue what are called either a true bill or a no true bill when they make their decisions whether or not to charge someone with a crime. When they believe there is enough evidence to proceed with prosecution, they issue a “true bill.” If the grand jury does not find sufficient evidence, they issue a "no true bill," meaning no charges will be filed.

This comes to mind because I was the foreman of a county grand jury 20 years ago. After hearing the evidence presented by the DA and the police officers involved in a case we issued true bills 100% of the time. Just recently, Jeanne Pirro, who was previously a county district attorney in Westchester County, NY, where I lived as a child, tried and failed three times to indict a woman for allegedly assaulting an ICE officer during an arrest of two purported gang members (read article).

Consider:

This is one case where a Trump toady’s overreach in trying to prove to Big Daddy how tough she was won’t result in a serious punishment for someone who doesn’t deserve more than a slap on the wrist since the assault charges were downgraded to a misdemeanor.

I want to emphasize

since there are likely to be many other cases where people charged with crimes are going to be treated to the harshest possible punishment because, well, because this is the way Trump rolls.

We know that

is one of Trump’s favorite words. He believes he’s the toughest of the tough. He wants to intimidate, not just his enemies, but also ordinary people or counties. He is driven to terrorize immigrants and criminals, because he’s not only tough, but ruthlessly tough.

There’s the old saying “if you do the cirme, you’ll do the time.” For Trump the crime is saying or even thinking anything - how to put it - nasty about him. As just happened with Chris Christie, not only will he call you a slob, but he will hint that he’ll order you prosecuted. I am sure he’s directed Pam Bondi to try to come up with some reason to sic the Justice Department on Gavin Newsom and J.B. Pritzker. Of course, what he really wants to do is not only send soldiers to California and Ohio to show who the real boss of those states is, but to arrest them… for anything.

Trump wants to be seen as so tough that even his hero Hannibal Lector would be scared of him.

To Trump, being tough also means that nobody tells him what to do. Internationally, it includes leaders of other countries. At home this obviously includes judges. Yeah, he’d really like to have his soldiers arrest them too.

Defying judicial orders is just the beginning. His defiance will include Congress if the Democrats somehow manage to win control of both houses in 2026. He might even have his soldiers evict mmeber of Congress from U.S. Capitol buildings so the greatest real estate genius of all time can find a better use for it.

Trump is biding his time until he can issue the ultimate executive order where, in some way, shape, or form, he will make himself president for life.

The lessons of history tell us one thing:

This was the top story on The Washington Post website at 8:45AM here in Oregon:

Excerpt:

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled to dismiss an unprecedented lawsuit filed by the Justice Department against all 15 federal district judges in Maryland, finding that the federal bench in that state legally adopted a standing order pausing all deportations for two business days so judges could evaluate migrants’ claims amid the Trump administration’s breakneck schedule of removals.
“In casting its wide net, the Executive ensnared an entire judicial body—a vital part of this coordinate branch of government—and its principal officers in novel and potentially calamitous litigation,” U.S. District Judge Thomas T. Cullen, who sits in Virginia and was specially assigned to preside over the dispute, wrote in an opinion dismissing the litigation. Cullen was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump in 2020.

Obviously this is a major setback in Trump’s quest smooth out the bumps in his road to becoming the dictator he aspires to be. I am sure he is readying a fleet of giant Army bulldozers to remove such impediments.