A few reasons perhaps: Epstein case which is hard to shake. He is a clear sexual predator that should have been registered as such long ago. It is no longer a case of simply being friends with one, or even being one, the question is how much he was in business with Epstein, providing a front (Escort Service, Casinos, Resorts, Beauty pageants...) for distribution of the girls, as well as recruitment of them...
Trump has fallen into the classic trap of Dictators, where the paranoia and the cycle of ever stronger control and cruelty to assure him of his safety is never enough. Isolation with only his most 'loyal' talking to him, assuring him of his brilliance, even when he tells people he has brought drug prices down "fifteen hundred percent". Trump has a history of doing what the last person told him to do, and often as not that person these days is Stephen Miller, and others who are not much better. He is very old and his health is getting worse every month, including his mental health.
His connection to his MAGA fan base is fracturing in part because he no longer talks to them. Since he started his campaign in 2015, Trump has held rallies. He talked to them and listened to their feedback. He was a master of the 'cold read', saying something and as the audience responded either flipping away from it or doubling down on it. Since the 2024 election, The only rally Trump has had was his inauguration. Sure, he shows his face, but those are staged events with the press as the primary interaction and some of those have fallen flat as well. Increasingly he is getting booed, such as at the recent WWE event, and we should note his 'stealing of the spotlight' when a trophy was presented to a team. He no longer listens to the press, he shuts them down, dismisses them, but still they get the last word on the air. Murdoch has turned on Trump, and neither of them want to admit how much Trump is a creation of Murdoch, two evil old men.
Trump has no competent people left in his administration except Stephen Miller, and his 'competency' is reserved for evil.
To review: Sexual Predator / Pedophile, Spiraling control freak, Isolated, Surrounded by incompetents, ruling by fear, and getting booed...
The question is not if Trump will implode, the question is when and how much more damage will he do in the process?
Psychiatrists believe that we the people are in real danger related to Trump’s impending narcissistic collapse. He will burn the country to the ground to save his own fragile ego.
Good to see Aaron doing some grunt work at the key-board. When I took a subsciption to this (well worth reading substack) I had in mind supporting Aaron the writer rather than Aaron the editor of other writers. Remember to keep your hand in mate!
Michael -- this tremendous piece is actually by David, not me (though I did edit it), and the byline field has now been fixed to reflect that. But stay tuned, I have plans to ramp up my writing again real soon. I've been functioning primarily as a publisher and editor in recent months but I've been feeling the itch to devote more time to writing works of my own that are longer than social media posts, so as we head into the fall I'm making it a priority to carve out a few hours a week to do it. I really appreciate your support!
David Lurie is excellent here. Credit where it is due... Your work Aaron is incredible, difficult and essential. I look forward to what you write with all this accumulated input..and time to think!
Terrific piece and analysis on the cult leader obsessively conducting his orchestra just as they obsessively need his puppeteering. And the phrase ‘the always active bowels of his raging cult’ is perfection.
There are two things that bring me hope. His cognitive decline and old age are becoming very apparent. Hopefully he won’t have much longer on this earth. Also, there is a sense that the mainstream media is not capturing the degree of disgust, distrust, dissatisfaction, and anger at what this regime is doing to the country. Clearly all but 25 to 30% of us have had enough. The news yesterday to axe further MRNA vaccine development, especially those that promise cancer patients relief and the clusterfuck around childhood and flu/Covid/RSV vaccines will further erode support as back to school and fall approaches. 79% of Americans support these and favor getting vaccinated. The deaths will further climb from this horrific regime.
What gives me real pause is I see no way through this without violence becoming inevitable. He is militarizing the country against all who oppose him. This will not end well.
It’s time to really up the resistance! I personally don’t know how much more of this I can tolerate.
Psychologist Paul Ekman identified that the six basic emotions in humans are:
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Happiness
Sadness
Surprise
Trump’s success is built upon triggering the first three of these. The Epstein story is activating the first two of these in the public, even in his base. Democrats need to highlight disgust 24/7, making it the “but her emails” anchor.
I agree--Just reposting, highlighting, what Trump writes, like here, or transcripts of what he says, replaying what is caught on video, makes for disgust. It's revealing. It's there for the taking.
Now is our moment—today take action against this harmful government. They are:
• Spitting on count orders.
• Seeding rot and corruption.
• Shielding a pedophile trafficking ring in plain sight.
• Gut-punching a broken healthcare system—ripping coverage from 13 million lives.
• Abusing the poor, the needy, and children.
• Stealing from the poor to fatten the rich.
I made 54 protest signs to aid protest groups. I will make many more to share. You will see something different in these signs! Help yourself to this second batch, and share them as far as you can.
This is excellent-thank you. I really do not think Trump will last for the full 4 years. We won't stand for it and Trump will not hold, as described. JD Vance scares me.
You left off right where you should have continued.
Other than your insult to an entire generation of boomers, I agree.
But the story continues. He is in the process of destroying an incredible amount of our society. You all know what he is doing.
We have been invaded by a dictator. He has immense power. Nothing is so horrible that he would not do it. He has shown us that over and over, and it's reached new heights.
Don't for a moment underestimate the damage he has done and will continue to escalate until much of what we care about as a nation is gone.
So, you started out fine, but the story goes beyond your opinion.
With this diminution of the cult leader’s attraction, a curious dilemma arises: If the Republicans don’t rush to defend here - defend the indefensible? - and the Project 2025 brains don’t need him - they just want that police state - who becomes the cult head? Vance? Vought? Ugly choices here.
Rizz-free JD can follow orders—when he stops being Just Doin’ Vacay—but he cannot lead a cult. MAGA dies with Donald.
A man wearing a Christmas sweater in the grocery yesterday was approached by my best friend. Instead of asking him why he wore it in August—it was coolish in Chevy Chase—she announced, “I hear Trump will be dead by Christmas!” Hilarity ensued.
An excellent point! The Red Caps have a serious charisma deficiency. (Trump, the bully, is the very face of anti-charisma!) Vance has none, Vought is a humorless Barney Fife (pace, Don Knotts), Miller sports a religion unacceptable to Christian Nationalists … who’s left?
Nobody! I blame Mark Burnett. Trump honed his showman skills, addicting television addicts to the toxic fluff of his infotainment, rendering legacy media supine. They trimmed his verbiage to fit.
Showman, certainly … but skills? He can’t act, he can barely read a teleprompter, he can barely speak coherently. I am totally confounded by the dominance of Trump; water seeks the lowest level.
Trump is a master at focusing his followers resentment and hate onto “the other.” A psychologist coined a new word, “victimcould,” to sum up their constant sense that everything is someone else’s fault. “We can’t buy a house, the Haitians are fixing them up,” “My son lost a job to a woman who had a degree,” “Biden spent FEMA money on illegals.”
His language is so simple and repetitive, it soothes them. Bad people, lowlifes, left liberal lunatics. He called his opponents low-IQ, retards, shit. He chanted bullshit in church.
As his speech got more abusive, they tittered with shock and then expectation. I grew up with television addicts who watched re-runs endless times. I re-read books, which they were snotty about. I was punished for “not watching enough TV,” so MAGA triggers me.
Hmm, yes! A master of projection: He endows that other with his own inadequacies. His constant anger,? I believe, stems from his own failures … and that he was caught at it time and time again. If everyone else is a loser, that means he isn’t.
Agreed. Paul Krugman made a similar point in a recent Substack Post. A weakened Trump is even more dangerous. Or to use a quotation from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra: " 'Tis better playing with a lion's whelp / Than with an old one dying."
Yes, Trump is 'losing it'.
A few reasons perhaps: Epstein case which is hard to shake. He is a clear sexual predator that should have been registered as such long ago. It is no longer a case of simply being friends with one, or even being one, the question is how much he was in business with Epstein, providing a front (Escort Service, Casinos, Resorts, Beauty pageants...) for distribution of the girls, as well as recruitment of them...
Trump has fallen into the classic trap of Dictators, where the paranoia and the cycle of ever stronger control and cruelty to assure him of his safety is never enough. Isolation with only his most 'loyal' talking to him, assuring him of his brilliance, even when he tells people he has brought drug prices down "fifteen hundred percent". Trump has a history of doing what the last person told him to do, and often as not that person these days is Stephen Miller, and others who are not much better. He is very old and his health is getting worse every month, including his mental health.
His connection to his MAGA fan base is fracturing in part because he no longer talks to them. Since he started his campaign in 2015, Trump has held rallies. He talked to them and listened to their feedback. He was a master of the 'cold read', saying something and as the audience responded either flipping away from it or doubling down on it. Since the 2024 election, The only rally Trump has had was his inauguration. Sure, he shows his face, but those are staged events with the press as the primary interaction and some of those have fallen flat as well. Increasingly he is getting booed, such as at the recent WWE event, and we should note his 'stealing of the spotlight' when a trophy was presented to a team. He no longer listens to the press, he shuts them down, dismisses them, but still they get the last word on the air. Murdoch has turned on Trump, and neither of them want to admit how much Trump is a creation of Murdoch, two evil old men.
Trump has no competent people left in his administration except Stephen Miller, and his 'competency' is reserved for evil.
To review: Sexual Predator / Pedophile, Spiraling control freak, Isolated, Surrounded by incompetents, ruling by fear, and getting booed...
The question is not if Trump will implode, the question is when and how much more damage will he do in the process?
Psychiatrists believe that we the people are in real danger related to Trump’s impending narcissistic collapse. He will burn the country to the ground to save his own fragile ego.
I think you overestimate Trump’s strategies—he’s a showman but not a strategist. And now, he’s no longer needed.
Good to see Aaron doing some grunt work at the key-board. When I took a subsciption to this (well worth reading substack) I had in mind supporting Aaron the writer rather than Aaron the editor of other writers. Remember to keep your hand in mate!
Michael -- this tremendous piece is actually by David, not me (though I did edit it), and the byline field has now been fixed to reflect that. But stay tuned, I have plans to ramp up my writing again real soon. I've been functioning primarily as a publisher and editor in recent months but I've been feeling the itch to devote more time to writing works of my own that are longer than social media posts, so as we head into the fall I'm making it a priority to carve out a few hours a week to do it. I really appreciate your support!
David Lurie is excellent here. Credit where it is due... Your work Aaron is incredible, difficult and essential. I look forward to what you write with all this accumulated input..and time to think!
See how many likes your declaration of intending to do more writing got Aaron!
Terrific piece and analysis on the cult leader obsessively conducting his orchestra just as they obsessively need his puppeteering. And the phrase ‘the always active bowels of his raging cult’ is perfection.
There are two things that bring me hope. His cognitive decline and old age are becoming very apparent. Hopefully he won’t have much longer on this earth. Also, there is a sense that the mainstream media is not capturing the degree of disgust, distrust, dissatisfaction, and anger at what this regime is doing to the country. Clearly all but 25 to 30% of us have had enough. The news yesterday to axe further MRNA vaccine development, especially those that promise cancer patients relief and the clusterfuck around childhood and flu/Covid/RSV vaccines will further erode support as back to school and fall approaches. 79% of Americans support these and favor getting vaccinated. The deaths will further climb from this horrific regime.
What gives me real pause is I see no way through this without violence becoming inevitable. He is militarizing the country against all who oppose him. This will not end well.
It’s time to really up the resistance! I personally don’t know how much more of this I can tolerate.
Psychologist Paul Ekman identified that the six basic emotions in humans are:
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Happiness
Sadness
Surprise
Trump’s success is built upon triggering the first three of these. The Epstein story is activating the first two of these in the public, even in his base. Democrats need to highlight disgust 24/7, making it the “but her emails” anchor.
I agree--Just reposting, highlighting, what Trump writes, like here, or transcripts of what he says, replaying what is caught on video, makes for disgust. It's revealing. It's there for the taking.
The ever-increasing coarsening, cruelty, and obscenity of his words shocks and thrills his fans.
Thank you for this…making sense out of something that makes no sense!
Now is our moment—today take action against this harmful government. They are:
• Spitting on count orders.
• Seeding rot and corruption.
• Shielding a pedophile trafficking ring in plain sight.
• Gut-punching a broken healthcare system—ripping coverage from 13 million lives.
• Abusing the poor, the needy, and children.
• Stealing from the poor to fatten the rich.
I made 54 protest signs to aid protest groups. I will make many more to share. You will see something different in these signs! Help yourself to this second batch, and share them as far as you can.
https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/more-free-protest-signs?r=3m1bs
This is excellent-thank you. I really do not think Trump will last for the full 4 years. We won't stand for it and Trump will not hold, as described. JD Vance scares me.
You left off right where you should have continued.
Other than your insult to an entire generation of boomers, I agree.
But the story continues. He is in the process of destroying an incredible amount of our society. You all know what he is doing.
We have been invaded by a dictator. He has immense power. Nothing is so horrible that he would not do it. He has shown us that over and over, and it's reached new heights.
Don't for a moment underestimate the damage he has done and will continue to escalate until much of what we care about as a nation is gone.
So, you started out fine, but the story goes beyond your opinion.
With this diminution of the cult leader’s attraction, a curious dilemma arises: If the Republicans don’t rush to defend here - defend the indefensible? - and the Project 2025 brains don’t need him - they just want that police state - who becomes the cult head? Vance? Vought? Ugly choices here.
Rizz-free JD can follow orders—when he stops being Just Doin’ Vacay—but he cannot lead a cult. MAGA dies with Donald.
A man wearing a Christmas sweater in the grocery yesterday was approached by my best friend. Instead of asking him why he wore it in August—it was coolish in Chevy Chase—she announced, “I hear Trump will be dead by Christmas!” Hilarity ensued.
An excellent point! The Red Caps have a serious charisma deficiency. (Trump, the bully, is the very face of anti-charisma!) Vance has none, Vought is a humorless Barney Fife (pace, Don Knotts), Miller sports a religion unacceptable to Christian Nationalists … who’s left?
Nobody! I blame Mark Burnett. Trump honed his showman skills, addicting television addicts to the toxic fluff of his infotainment, rendering legacy media supine. They trimmed his verbiage to fit.
Showman, certainly … but skills? He can’t act, he can barely read a teleprompter, he can barely speak coherently. I am totally confounded by the dominance of Trump; water seeks the lowest level.
Trump is a master at focusing his followers resentment and hate onto “the other.” A psychologist coined a new word, “victimcould,” to sum up their constant sense that everything is someone else’s fault. “We can’t buy a house, the Haitians are fixing them up,” “My son lost a job to a woman who had a degree,” “Biden spent FEMA money on illegals.”
His language is so simple and repetitive, it soothes them. Bad people, lowlifes, left liberal lunatics. He called his opponents low-IQ, retards, shit. He chanted bullshit in church.
As his speech got more abusive, they tittered with shock and then expectation. I grew up with television addicts who watched re-runs endless times. I re-read books, which they were snotty about. I was punished for “not watching enough TV,” so MAGA triggers me.
Hmm, yes! A master of projection: He endows that other with his own inadequacies. His constant anger,? I believe, stems from his own failures … and that he was caught at it time and time again. If everyone else is a loser, that means he isn’t.
he will be undone within the year.
Remember if Trump falls, JD Vance is right behind him to become president. Vance is not senile or old and will do much worse for a longer time.
Agreed. Paul Krugman made a similar point in a recent Substack Post. A weakened Trump is even more dangerous. Or to use a quotation from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra: " 'Tis better playing with a lion's whelp / Than with an old one dying."
Perhaps The Donald broke with The Jeffrey because the latter wouldn’t let the former in … or at least, for a better percentage.