Powerful. Devastatingly powerful. And you hit it on the nose. I'm glad you used the word "sadistic." In August, 2016, I watched the Republican debates. I was astonished by the pleasure Trump took in humiliating his opponents. I am a retired psychiatrist, and recognized his behavior for what it was: sadism. From that day till now, I have never used his name. (I did here, which is one of my very few exceptions.) My name for him is, and always will be, "the orange sadist." I've added a middle name recently: "the orange pedophilic sadist." Could we have a worse creature in charge of our nation?
I take your concluding question literally and I'm convinced the answer is No. I've wondered many times over the last 10 years whether, if you chose at random from the bottom, say, 1 percent of Americans ranked by competence and character, you would wind up with someone worse than Trump.
At this point, I think you could trawl the jails and mental institutions of our country, pick the worst of the worst, and we'd still be better off, in less danger. I realize that may be a small exaggeration, but really a very small one. He weds unique capabilities to unique pathologies.
I'm sorry, but this makes no difference any more. At some point, no matter how badly you were hurt as a child (and ten million or more Americans were), YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO HURT AND KILL OTHER PEOPLE. PERIOD. Screaming into what "void?!" You feel compassion for a man who kills 172 children and their teachers while they're at school, then blames the enemy for killing them, and when proof is given to him that HE and his minions are responsible claims, "I don't know anything about that." He is the sickest of the sick. He became a monster. His older brother, and that brother's children, was anything but. Fred, Jr. had the brains to leave their nasty father. The orange sadist did not. P.S. He is NOT a "child" any more -- even though his tantrums put him at a developmental age of 3, and his vocabulary is that of a 9-year-old boy. A lot more is going on this man's psychology than "hurt and broken child." BTW, I have been listening for close to 10 years now, waiting to hear him say a truthful word. Still waiting.
I agree that his childhood does not absolve him of anything. He is as evil as Hitler, and surrounds himself with evil. I hope that they all find a fate as the Nazi leadership did.
Thanks so much for responding. I could absolutely have compassion for him as a child. However, like you, when the pattern continues -- and on a MASSIVE scale at it is doing here in the U.S. -- those actions become unforgivable.
There is a plan… it’s called “Operation Epstein Distraction”. He will destroy the world as we know it to hide the fact that he is the world’s second biggest predator.😡
Trump's conduct has nothing to do with any potentially lawful or constitutional purpose. It is not governance or government. It is abuse and usurpation of power. It calls to mind the reason that the people who wrote and ratified our Constitution decided not to give the power to choose to start a war to the President.
The people who wrote (and many who voted to ratify) our Constitution understood that choosing a war may be the fastest way possible to destroy the nation, itself, and to deprive its people of life, liberty and property without due process of law. They knew (and considered) the fact that the people of Athens, themselves, ended the Golden Age of Greece and essentially destroyed their own nation by choosing to attack Syracuse. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Expedition.
In Federalist No 6, Alexander Hamilton or James Madison wrote about the Peloponnesian War, the man who led Athenians into it, his petty motivations, and the war's devastating consequences in terms similar to those that apply to Trump today:
"The celebrated Pericles, in compliance with the resentment of a prostitute, at the expense of much of the blood and treasure of his countrymen, attacked, vanquished, and destroyed the city of the SAMNIANS. The same man, stimulated by private pique against the MEGARENSIANS, another nation of Greece, or to avoid a prosecution with which he was threatened as an accomplice of a supposed theft of the statuary Phidias, or to get rid of the accusations prepared to be brought against him for dissipating the funds of the state in the purchase of popularity, or from a combination of all these causes, was the primitive author of that famous and fatal war, distinguished in the Grecian annals by the name of the PELOPONNESIAN war; which, after various vicissitudes, intermissions, and renewals, terminated in the ruin of the Athenian commonwealth."
So in Federalist No. 69, Hamilton emphasized that the President's “authority” as Commander in Chief “amount[s] to nothing more than” being the “first General and admiral” of the U.S., in striking contrast with the power “of the British king [which] extends to the DECLARING of war and to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all which, by the Constitution [were vested exclusively in] the legislature.”
For good reason, our Constitution vested the power to choose to risk or sacrifice our lives, liberty and property on a war exclusively in those of our representatives whom we have the power to choose and remove directly. That's a big part of the reason our Constitution secures the right and power of the People to remove the entire House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate every two years.
Trump is transactional. He’s just giving his backers what they want to stay out of jail. Oligarchs have gov contracts and control of regulation, the Fed, the Treasury, the healthcare system, tech bros have our data & the military, crypto bros have the US dollar, and everyone in the regime is grifting.
The fascists got retribution on blue cities with ICE, private prisons, and a world order built on violence and domination - AND, the Supreme Court.
Now the Christian evangelicals are getting a holy war, on top of anti-gay/trans policies.
The regime is running out of time. They’re sure they’ll lose in Nov. It’s why he’s pushing the SAVE Act so hard.
Stop looking for a normal reason for what is happening.
Also … I’m reading “The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate.” Great insight into this political moment.
Donald Trump has always been very simple to understand. David Lurie buried the point in the middle of his excellent piece when he wrote, "Trump doesn't like being defied by those he considered lessors" (sic, lessers). He has always been a social climber, craving to be accepted by a Manhattan elite who early on in his life deemed him lesser. Immigrants are lesser than white male Christian nationalists; Ukraine is lesser than Putin's Russia; the Federal Reserve's financial acumen is lesser than his; "the Generals" with their experience and judgment are lesser than his insular world view. The weak are lesser than the violent. Even poor Staten Island he considers lesser than Manhattan, even though it is the only New York City borough he won in 2024 (and he has visited only once in the last ten years, when he campaigned there in April 2016. He hasn't been able to win adoration at home or abroad, so he's showing all of the ungrateful wretches that he can make them.
Hi David, thank you for not minding my correction. And, I liked your lede, just my opinion that I wish your very important point was higher in the piece for anyone not reading the whole thing. :}
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! For the last year I’ve been telling anyone who would listen (and a few who would not) to stop pretending there’s any strategy to Trump’s tantrums. I’ve proposed a thought experiment: Imagine someone’s demented grandpa. Now imagine that demented grandpa is a sadistic malignant narcissist. Now imagine someone went ahead and made sadistic, malignant narcissistic, and demented grandpa the commander-in-chief of the U.S. what would it look like?
I don’t say this to make light of those who suffer from dementia or their loved ones, but that seems to be a key component to what you describe as Trump being “nuts.”
Trump? What about the Republicans who are so afraid of not being re-elected? Either they’re happy with the atrocities or want the perks. Footnote: I prefer “stupider" rather than "more stupid" because it sounds, well, stupider.
I think that the Republican congresspeople put themselves in a position of damned if they do/damned if they don’t – at this point, their choices appear to be retribution by the dictator’s regime OR prosecution by the opposition for their illegal, treasonous actions.
As staggering as his actions and inactions are, it is not only he who is mind-blowing. That there are so many people 'around him' who eagerly advance his violence, destruction, & sadistic cruelty. Then, that about 1/3 of the voting public still enthusiastically choose him. How did this society produce these results-??
I said it 11 years ago, and I will say it again now: he is one thing, but it is a whole other thing that "my fellow Americans" are unable to see the signs of a narcissist with pathological tendencies, and if they do, oppose it.
He will be gone one day, but those who supported him will remain. It took me almost a decade to go "no contact" and recover from a relationship with a narcissist. The only way to go no contact with a nation is to leave it.
The goal is to make us less ready for “unexpected” conflicts. Putin’s plan to weaken America is working beautifully, above and beyond his wildest dreams!
What is missing in this analysis is that the Congressional Republicans are enabling a mentally disturbed man, and the corporate media is treating him as if he were sane.
Your byline says it all ... he's nuts. Everything he says and everything he does only provides further proof (as if any were necessary) that he is completely bonkers, yet his band of simpering sycophants continues to go along with it all. History will remember them for the spineless fools they are proving themselves to be.
If we want to commit global suicide, why pick on Iran? Wouldn’t North Korea be a better target? That way we could end humankind in a real nuclear showdown.
Powerful. Devastatingly powerful. And you hit it on the nose. I'm glad you used the word "sadistic." In August, 2016, I watched the Republican debates. I was astonished by the pleasure Trump took in humiliating his opponents. I am a retired psychiatrist, and recognized his behavior for what it was: sadism. From that day till now, I have never used his name. (I did here, which is one of my very few exceptions.) My name for him is, and always will be, "the orange sadist." I've added a middle name recently: "the orange pedophilic sadist." Could we have a worse creature in charge of our nation?
I take your concluding question literally and I'm convinced the answer is No. I've wondered many times over the last 10 years whether, if you chose at random from the bottom, say, 1 percent of Americans ranked by competence and character, you would wind up with someone worse than Trump.
At this point, I think you could trawl the jails and mental institutions of our country, pick the worst of the worst, and we'd still be better off, in less danger. I realize that may be a small exaggeration, but really a very small one. He weds unique capabilities to unique pathologies.
Well said. Thank you.
It is easy to see the hurt and broken child screaming into the void.
I'm sorry, but this makes no difference any more. At some point, no matter how badly you were hurt as a child (and ten million or more Americans were), YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO HURT AND KILL OTHER PEOPLE. PERIOD. Screaming into what "void?!" You feel compassion for a man who kills 172 children and their teachers while they're at school, then blames the enemy for killing them, and when proof is given to him that HE and his minions are responsible claims, "I don't know anything about that." He is the sickest of the sick. He became a monster. His older brother, and that brother's children, was anything but. Fred, Jr. had the brains to leave their nasty father. The orange sadist did not. P.S. He is NOT a "child" any more -- even though his tantrums put him at a developmental age of 3, and his vocabulary is that of a 9-year-old boy. A lot more is going on this man's psychology than "hurt and broken child." BTW, I have been listening for close to 10 years now, waiting to hear him say a truthful word. Still waiting.
I agree that his childhood does not absolve him of anything. He is as evil as Hitler, and surrounds himself with evil. I hope that they all find a fate as the Nazi leadership did.
Thanks so much for responding. I could absolutely have compassion for him as a child. However, like you, when the pattern continues -- and on a MASSIVE scale at it is doing here in the U.S. -- those actions become unforgivable.
Aye.
That does not matter, anymore, given the scale of violence and destruction he continues to impose on the world.
ABSOLUTELY!!!
There is a plan… it’s called “Operation Epstein Distraction”. He will destroy the world as we know it to hide the fact that he is the world’s second biggest predator.😡
Spot on analysis, David 🎯
Yes, and Mikey Johnson would welcome Jesus reaching down to pull nim up to heaven.
Great choice for that top photo. trump howling at the world.
Trump's conduct has nothing to do with any potentially lawful or constitutional purpose. It is not governance or government. It is abuse and usurpation of power. It calls to mind the reason that the people who wrote and ratified our Constitution decided not to give the power to choose to start a war to the President.
The people who wrote (and many who voted to ratify) our Constitution understood that choosing a war may be the fastest way possible to destroy the nation, itself, and to deprive its people of life, liberty and property without due process of law. They knew (and considered) the fact that the people of Athens, themselves, ended the Golden Age of Greece and essentially destroyed their own nation by choosing to attack Syracuse. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Expedition.
In Federalist No 6, Alexander Hamilton or James Madison wrote about the Peloponnesian War, the man who led Athenians into it, his petty motivations, and the war's devastating consequences in terms similar to those that apply to Trump today:
"The celebrated Pericles, in compliance with the resentment of a prostitute, at the expense of much of the blood and treasure of his countrymen, attacked, vanquished, and destroyed the city of the SAMNIANS. The same man, stimulated by private pique against the MEGARENSIANS, another nation of Greece, or to avoid a prosecution with which he was threatened as an accomplice of a supposed theft of the statuary Phidias, or to get rid of the accusations prepared to be brought against him for dissipating the funds of the state in the purchase of popularity, or from a combination of all these causes, was the primitive author of that famous and fatal war, distinguished in the Grecian annals by the name of the PELOPONNESIAN war; which, after various vicissitudes, intermissions, and renewals, terminated in the ruin of the Athenian commonwealth."
So in Federalist No. 69, Hamilton emphasized that the President's “authority” as Commander in Chief “amount[s] to nothing more than” being the “first General and admiral” of the U.S., in striking contrast with the power “of the British king [which] extends to the DECLARING of war and to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all which, by the Constitution [were vested exclusively in] the legislature.”
For good reason, our Constitution vested the power to choose to risk or sacrifice our lives, liberty and property on a war exclusively in those of our representatives whom we have the power to choose and remove directly. That's a big part of the reason our Constitution secures the right and power of the People to remove the entire House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate every two years.
That assumes that the representatives were working FOR the people, which they obviously are NOT.
Trump is transactional. He’s just giving his backers what they want to stay out of jail. Oligarchs have gov contracts and control of regulation, the Fed, the Treasury, the healthcare system, tech bros have our data & the military, crypto bros have the US dollar, and everyone in the regime is grifting.
The fascists got retribution on blue cities with ICE, private prisons, and a world order built on violence and domination - AND, the Supreme Court.
Now the Christian evangelicals are getting a holy war, on top of anti-gay/trans policies.
The regime is running out of time. They’re sure they’ll lose in Nov. It’s why he’s pushing the SAVE Act so hard.
Stop looking for a normal reason for what is happening.
Also … I’m reading “The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate.” Great insight into this political moment.
Donald Trump has always been very simple to understand. David Lurie buried the point in the middle of his excellent piece when he wrote, "Trump doesn't like being defied by those he considered lessors" (sic, lessers). He has always been a social climber, craving to be accepted by a Manhattan elite who early on in his life deemed him lesser. Immigrants are lesser than white male Christian nationalists; Ukraine is lesser than Putin's Russia; the Federal Reserve's financial acumen is lesser than his; "the Generals" with their experience and judgment are lesser than his insular world view. The weak are lesser than the violent. Even poor Staten Island he considers lesser than Manhattan, even though it is the only New York City borough he won in 2024 (and he has visited only once in the last ten years, when he campaigned there in April 2016. He hasn't been able to win adoration at home or abroad, so he's showing all of the ungrateful wretches that he can make them.
Whether or not I buried the lede, thanks for noting my use of the improper word "lessors" instead of "lessers". David
Hi David, thank you for not minding my correction. And, I liked your lede, just my opinion that I wish your very important point was higher in the piece for anyone not reading the whole thing. :}
Understood and appreciated.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! For the last year I’ve been telling anyone who would listen (and a few who would not) to stop pretending there’s any strategy to Trump’s tantrums. I’ve proposed a thought experiment: Imagine someone’s demented grandpa. Now imagine that demented grandpa is a sadistic malignant narcissist. Now imagine someone went ahead and made sadistic, malignant narcissistic, and demented grandpa the commander-in-chief of the U.S. what would it look like?
I don’t say this to make light of those who suffer from dementia or their loved ones, but that seems to be a key component to what you describe as Trump being “nuts.”
Trump? What about the Republicans who are so afraid of not being re-elected? Either they’re happy with the atrocities or want the perks. Footnote: I prefer “stupider" rather than "more stupid" because it sounds, well, stupider.
I think that the Republican congresspeople put themselves in a position of damned if they do/damned if they don’t – at this point, their choices appear to be retribution by the dictator’s regime OR prosecution by the opposition for their illegal, treasonous actions.
As staggering as his actions and inactions are, it is not only he who is mind-blowing. That there are so many people 'around him' who eagerly advance his violence, destruction, & sadistic cruelty. Then, that about 1/3 of the voting public still enthusiastically choose him. How did this society produce these results-??
I always wondered how someone like Hitler rose to power. No longer wondering...
YEP
Why the F does everything they do need a hat?
What else would he do when he has a bad hair day?
I said it 11 years ago, and I will say it again now: he is one thing, but it is a whole other thing that "my fellow Americans" are unable to see the signs of a narcissist with pathological tendencies, and if they do, oppose it.
He will be gone one day, but those who supported him will remain. It took me almost a decade to go "no contact" and recover from a relationship with a narcissist. The only way to go no contact with a nation is to leave it.
The goal is to make us less ready for “unexpected” conflicts. Putin’s plan to weaken America is working beautifully, above and beyond his wildest dreams!
What is missing in this analysis is that the Congressional Republicans are enabling a mentally disturbed man, and the corporate media is treating him as if he were sane.
Your byline says it all ... he's nuts. Everything he says and everything he does only provides further proof (as if any were necessary) that he is completely bonkers, yet his band of simpering sycophants continues to go along with it all. History will remember them for the spineless fools they are proving themselves to be.
If we want to commit global suicide, why pick on Iran? Wouldn’t North Korea be a better target? That way we could end humankind in a real nuclear showdown.
Similarly, Vladimir Putin predicted Ukraine would fall over the weekend.