We have all seen this before, or we’ve at least seen precursors. Trump has attacked people recklessly, he has been completely tone-deaf, self-absorbed, reckless, all that, plenty.
But there is a rising awareness that Trump eclipsed everything yesterday, deciding to golf on the weekend that we mark our 100,000th death, the day after recklessly demanding the nation’s churches be opened (WTF?), then rage tweeting that one of his most prominent critics should be investigated for murder by “forensic geniuses,” retweeting sick stuff calling Hillary Clinton a “skank,” Nancy Pelosi “Poligrip,” and mocking Stacey Abram’s weight, while also publicly fighting like a child with the nation’s former attorney general
Journalist Steven Beschloss had had enough, from Rawstory:
“As Americans die, Trump spends his time golfing [1], attacking Joe Scarborough [2] and fighting with Jeff Sessions [3] for recusing himself. What a tragedy for the country to be held hostage by a malignancy like this,
Sometimes we treat Trump like a farce, and have a good laugh. That seemed impossible yesterday. The weekend is too sobering. The New York Times dedicated its entire front page to name 1,000 victims of COVID – and added a sentence about their lives, because “they were more than a number, they were us.” Certain governors urged extra caution, knowing of the hotspots out there and the dangers of setting Trump’s supporters loose. It is Memorial Day weekend, when we remember the ultimate sacrifices, and our economy seems to be teetering on the brink.
That is what made yesterday “different,” Trump’s sheer wacky-recklessness juxtaposed against the seriousness of what we all face. Dr. Brandy Lee, the Yale Psychiatrist agreed with Beschloss by noting:
“This is why we have called Donald Trump, above all, to be a ‘national mental health crisis’whose severest effects are yet to come,” Dr. Lee warned.
She is, of course, right. The Duty to Warn group has been warning us from the very beginning, since Trump’s first spring as president. They promised he would get worse, they promised he was a threat. That promise has come true, but like the frog in the pot on the stove, we never jumped. Had we gone from that first week as president to this behavior immediately, the nation would surely have jumped. There was a time when the Republican senators at least drew some lines that Trump couldn’t cross. No more.
This is where we now stand, where the president of the United States retweets garbage like this, defacing the office:
To protect PolyGrip during this pandemic, we have developed 2 options. With the DJT option, she will be able to tongue and adjust her dentures more easily. With duct tape, she won’t be able to drink booze on the job as much. Which do you think she will prefer? #maga [4] #tcot [5] #kag [6] pic.twitter.com/cqRnPmmdyf [7]
— John K Stahl (@JohnKStahlUSA) May 22, 2020 [8]
And, as said above, he’s retweeting this garbage as the nation’s near future looks anything but “great.”
The pressure does seem to be getting to him and one can argue about whether that is a good thing. He knows he’s down in polls. He knows the economy is likely not coming back in a “V” shaped recovery. He knows that no one is buying “Obamagate.” He likely even knows that he’s physically far worse off, as we’ve noted here before, he’s displaying plenty of concerning physical symptoms.
This is why we have called Donald Trump, above all, to be a “national mental health crisis” whose severest effects are yet to come. https://t.co/khyqhZX880 [9]
— Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv (@BandyXLee1) May 24, 2020 [10]
At this point all one can do is attempt to increase that pressure, sap whatever support he has left, and try to get the country to “jump” in some way. The only way to do it is to pass around the concerns, talk about the real challenges we face, and the real failures behind us. Use yesterday as a guide marker because it was a new low, and plenty of sane people seem to recognize it as such.
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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom