I WAS BORN WITH A CURIOUS MIND
As I write this, we are 90 days into the presidency of Donald Trump. He has done cruel, stupid, dangerous things, and I don’t want to minimize their impact. Even if, by some miracle, Bernie Sanders became president tomorrow, we’d be months, if not years, undoing the damage.
Nevertheless, the good guys persisted. As bad as Trump has been, it could have been worse. We can start by celebrating the fact that Trump is an ignorant fool, with advisors and allies cut from the same cloth. They overreached on the Muslim ban, fell flat on their faces with Obamacare repeal, and clearly have no clue about how to implement the rest of their agenda. Erstwhile golden boy Paul Ryan has been exposed as a fraud, and Trump’s man in the House of Representatives, Jason Chaffetz, has announced that he won’t run for re-election. The two men Trump was counting on to stop the investigation into Russiagate, Jeff Sessions and Devin Nunes, have had to step aside. The Senate Intelligence Committee, at least, appears to be serious about getting to the bottom of the scandal. Steve Bannon is in disfavor, and perhaps on the verge of exile. Even Trump’s comrade in pussy-grabbing, Bill O’Reilly, has been fired by Fox News.
Best of all, Democrats are fighting back, with progressive citizens leading the way. Democratic politicians know that if they collude with Trump and congressional Republicans, they’ll be primaried in their next election. This is no time to relax our vigilance, of course, but I’m celebrating 90 days of a resistance that has been more successful than I dared hope on January 20.
I wonder what the next 90 days hold in store. I know even less than Jon Snow, but there are a few things I’m especially curious about.
I wonder if Jason Chaffetz will serve out his current term or quit early. When a prominent politician abruptly resigns to spend more time with his family, it usually means news of an extra-marital affair is about to surface, but since Republicans these days are drawn to Russians like moths to a flame, it’s not impossible that there are Russiagate implications here.
Speaking of which, I wonder what hapless doofus Devin Nunes found in those classified FBI documents on Russiagate on his midnight ride to the White House. Whatever it was, it spooked him pretty badly. And I wonder why his first impulse was to run to Paul Ryan for advice. All that did was insure that Ryan was complicit in the scandal, whatever it is. I’ll bet Ryan was thrilled. Now “what did Ryan know, and when did he know it” is a legitimate question.
Earlier this month, former Trump advisor Carter Page (subject of a FISA warrant) was all over TV, dropping hints that he’s not going to be anybody’s fall guy. At the same time, Moscow Mike Flynn was publicly fishing for an immunity deal, only to be told no thanks. I wonder how long it will take before one or both of them decide to turn state’s evidence in return for leniency.
I’m curious about CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s comment last Friday that Wikileaks was “a non-state hostile intelligence service often embedded by state actors like Russia.” You could read that as a rebuke to Donald Trump, who proclaimed “We love Wikileaks” during last fall’s campaign. Or you could read it with an emphasis on “non-state” and assume it’s an attempt to help immunize Trump against possible articles of impeachment accusing him of working with a foreign power to influence the election. Will Trump’s impeachment hinge on the question of whether Julian Assange was a Russian agent, or merely a Hillary hater working closely with Vladimir Putin? Is there a meaningful difference between those two positions?
I’m really curious about British conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch, former Conservative Member of Parliament who now lives in New York with her husband (who’s the manager of the band Metallica!). The day before the election, Mensch wrote an obscure article asserting that a FISA court had allowed the FBI to surveil an American citizen in conjunction with an investigation into the connection between Donald Trump and Russian banks. She was ignored by the mainstream media, but she turned out to have been substantially correct.
Now Mensch has written that Carter Page went to Moscow last August to negotiate a deal with Russia on Trump’s behalf, offering to implement policies favorable to Russia in exchange for help in winning the election. She also says that former Trump advisor Boris Epshteyn is a Russian agent, and that American intelligence has a recording of Epshteyn, Page, and Paul Manafort discussing Page’s impending trip to Moscow on behalf of Donald Trump.
Sounds crazy, right? It gets crazier. Mensch warned her Twitter followers not to get “too attached to anyone north of Hatch.” That would be President pro tempore of the Senate Orrin Hatch, not Hatch, New Mexico, chile capital of the world. She was referring to the line of presidential succession, clearly implying that not only Donald Trump, but also Mike Pence and Paul Ryan have been caught up in Russiagate and will be forced out of office. As much as I love a good conspiracy theory, this seems a little too good to be true.
But even if indictments and impeachment fall through, there’s still the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which allows for the removal of a President who is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Lately, Donald Trump has had nothing to offer but rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air. That makes cable news was happy, because nothing says “Presidential” like blowing foreigners up.
But Trump managed to commit a couple of gaffes at the annual Easter Egg Roll. Melania had to elbow him to remind him to put his hand over his heart during the national anthem. Then he autographed a kid’s MAGA hat – and threw it into the crowd instead of simply handing it back to the kid.
He also gave a weird interview on North Korea, where he obviously couldn’t remember Kim Jong Un’s name, repeatedly calling him “this gentleman,” and sounding very much as though he thought that Kim, his father, and his grandfather were all one person. What the heck, they’re all named Kim. It’s like they’re deliberately trying to confuse us.
All that makes me wonder about Trump’s mental condition. Something’s just not right with our 45th president. Yes, he’s narcissistic, dishonest, and not particularly smart. Nothing new there. I’m talking about his struggles with language. He’s worse than inarticulate. George W. Bush was inarticulate; we know what an inarticulate president sounds like. Donald Trump is incoherent. (See the link below for a classic example of Trump’s digressive, recursive speech.)
Maybe it’s just the pressure of being POTUS that’s getting to him, but Trump (whose father had Alzheimer’s) sure seems to be exhibiting symptoms of cognitive impairment. His odd behavior this past week also included a speech in Wisconsin where he twice referred to Paul Ryan as “Ron,” along with his infamous chocolate cake interview on Fox, when he said he’d dropped Tomahawk missiles on Iraq rather than Syria.
The medical establishment is famously reluctant to speculate about any president’s mental health, but a few neurologists have begun to point to the symptoms of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), which are eerily similar to behaviors we’ve seen recently from Donald Trump. From the Alzheimer’s Organization website: “Although people with Alzheimer's may have trouble thinking of the right word or remembering names, they tend to have less difficulty making sense when they speak, understanding the speech of others, or reading than those with FTD.”
Trump is known to be a reluctant reader. In his first few weeks as president, he avoided intelligence briefings entirely. Finally he demanded shorter briefing papers consisting mainly of bullet points, graphs, and maps. Fair enough, we know that adult learning styles differ. Maybe Trump is an auditory learner. But what about the way he talks?
In interviews, even friendly ones, Trump’s responses veer off on odd tangents, and he begins to repeat certain words or phrases compulsively. Either he doesn’t know the answer to the question he was asked, or he can’t find words to explain his position. Neither possibility is terribly reassuring.
I wonder who will be president a year from now.