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TWSP/UFAA Morning Briefing for Wednesday, August 3, 2016

“JUST PLAIN CRAZY”:WITH ATTACKS ON GOP BIGWIGS, FIRE MARSHALS, AND BABIES, IS TRUMP APPROACHING A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN? OBAMA LABELS BILLIONAIRE AS “UNFIT,” CHALLENGES GOP TO DUMP HIM; WIDESPREAD DISCUSSION OF TRUMP MENTAL DISINTEGRATION BY PRESS AND TV COMMENTATORS ACROSS THE IDEOLOGICAL SPECTRUM; KRUGMAN SEES “DERP SPIRAL” FOR TRUMP AS HE FALLS FURTHER BEHIND IN POLLS; WILL TRUMP’S SPOOK BACKERS ARRANGE OLYMPIC TERROR TO STEADY TRUMP’S FALTERING CAMPAIGN?

Today President Obama restated his view that Donald Trump is unfit for the office of the presidency. Obama also challenged the leaders of the Republican Party to repudiate their nominee instead of limiting themselves to denouncing Trump’s erratic statements from day-to-day. Of course, if Obama demands something, the Republicans are sure to want to disobey. So maybe this intervention by Obama may be designed to make it harder for the Republicans to dump the fascist billionaire, thus increasing the long-term damage to the moribund GOP.

Hillary Clinton is now riding a convention bounce, which is giving her a nationwide lead in the high single digits. In the individual battleground states, her position is also getting stronger. The general election campaign started last Friday, and Trump took the weekend off. These first few days have been catastrophic for the fascist billionaire, and rumors are now circulating about widespread dissatisfaction in the Trump campaign staff. According to CNBC’s John Harwood on Twitter, a long-time ally of campaign boss Paul Manafort says: “Manafort not challenging Trump any more. Mailing it in. Staff suicidal.” Another source confirms this, saying: “It’s all true” and “Way worse than people realize.”

Will vice presidential candidate Mike Pence resign from this trail of tears before Labor Day? Will the Trump campaign implode through mass resignations, especially if the stingy billionaire refuses to pay the troops? Or will the polls be enough to make the rats leave the ship?

Trump is in deep trouble and seems to lack awareness of his own situation.

Paul Krugman of the New York Times is already speculating about how the mentally unstable Trump will behave when it becomes obvious to him that the election is irretrievably lost. For this Krugman has invented a new term to apply to Trump – the “derp spiral”:

‘“Nobel Prize-winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman coined the phrase “derp spiral” on Tuesday in preparation for Donald Trump’s behavior once he decides he will likely lose the election in November. “Aha!” Krugman exclaimed on Twitter. “I think I have the term for what happens to Trump if (when) he finds himself ever more likely to lose: he will go into a derp spiral.” KnowYourMeme defines derp as “an expression associated with stupidity.” While trying to change the subject from his attacks on a Muslim family whose son died fighting for the U.S. Army in Iraq, Trump called Hillary Clinton “the devil” on Monday. And he warned that the election could be “rigged” to prevent him from winning. On Tuesday, he continued to suggest that Hillary Clinton was the devil at a rally in Virginia, where he also ordered a baby removed from the event and pocketed a Purple Heart from a wounded veteran.’1

The growing awareness of Trump’s mental illness comes a little bit more than two months after the landmark presentations by the Tax Wall Street Party at the New York Left Forum on May 21 in Manhattan. At that time, the TWSP catalogued 10 mental and other disorders which had been attributed to Trump in an effort to explain his behavior. These included:

  1. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
  2. Alzheimer’s dementia
  3. Narcissist Personality Disorder-megalomania
  4. Manic-Depressive syndrome with bipolar disorder
  5. Sadistic Personality Disorder
  6. Histrionic Personality Disorder with infantile regression
  7. Multiple Personality Disorder
  8. Creutzfeld-Jakob disease
  9. Alcoholic co-dependence
  10. Neurosyphilis

As of this writing, all of these hypotheses remain very much on the table. An informed electorate would require an international conference of mental health professionals to develop a competent diagnosis of the mentally disturbed Trump.

Trump is already complaining that the election is fixed against him, and it is clear to many observers that the presidential transition of next January 20 will not be in the traditional form if Trump does not win. This would establish Trump as the biggest crybaby and sore loser in American history, and will definitely do permanent damage to our system of government. That is why it would be better if Trump were to back out now.

More evidence of Trump’s mental instability arrived today in the late afternoon with reports of Trump’s attacks on leading Republicans, including Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Arizona Senator John McCain, and New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte. All are facing seriously contested primary elections.

Ryan had stalled for more than a month in giving Trump his endorsement after the conclusion of the primaries, but had then announced his support for the billionaire and had presided over Trump’s Cleveland convention. McCain had also given Trump, his grudging endorsement. Kelly Ayotte is the third member of the Three Amigos clique in the Senate, along with McCain and Lindsey Graham. According to a report which appeared on the Washington Post website this afternoon:

‘Trump praised Ryan’s underdog opponent, Paul Nehlen, for running “a very good campaign” and said of Ryan: “I like Paul, but these are horrible times for our country. We need very strong leadership. We need very, very strong leadership. And I’m just not quite there yet. I’m not quite there yet.”

“I’ve never been there with John McCain because I’ve always felt that he should have done a much better job for the vets,” Trump continued. “He has not done a good job for the vets and I’ve always felt that he should have done a much better job for the vets. So I’ve always had a difficult time with John for that reason, because our vets are not being treated properly. They’re not being treated fairly.” McCain is locked in a three-way Republican primary — the election is Aug. 30 and early voting begins this week — against former state senator Kelli Ward and tea party activist Clair Van Steenwyk. A third challenger, Alex Meluskey, suspended his campaign this week.

“New Hampshire is one of my favorite places,” Trump said. “You have a Kelly Ayotte who doesn’t want to talk about Trump, but I’m beating her in the polls by a lot. You tell me. Are these people that should be representing us, okay? You tell me.”

Trump continued, “I don’t know Kelly Ayotte. I know she’s given me no support — zero support — and yet I’m leading her in the polls. I’m doing very well in New Hampshire. We need loyal people in this country. We need fighters in this country. We don’t need weak people. We have enough of them. We need fighters in this country. But Kelly Ayotte has given me zero support, and I’m doing great in New Hampshire.”

Ayotte, whose aides said she still plans to vote for Trump, responded with a statement: “I call it like I see it, and I’m always going to stand up for our military families and what’s best for the people of New Hampshire.” [Ayotte is reported to have been relieved by Trump’s attack, since she has been denounced as a tool of Trump by the local Democrats.]

Trump went on to say that if he loses the election, he would start two or three “anti-certain candidate” super PACs, which he vowed to fund with $10 million apiece, to savage Republicans or Democrats of his choosing in future elections.’2

On the same day, retiring Congressman Rep. Richard Hanna of New York declared he would support the Democratic ticket. A top Bush family operative departed from the GOP, following several other operatives who have jumped ship.

With this latest round of psychotic antics, Trump is actively antagonizing the Koch brothers’ wing of the Republican Party. The multi-billionaire Koch brothers have stated that they will not deliver financial support for Trump, but will rather focus their money on preserving reactionary Republican control of the Senate and the House. Now, Trump is making that maneuver much more difficult, because he is undermining key Republican candidates in the legislative branch. What will the Koch brothers do to shut him down?

This evening MSNBC and especially CNN have been focused on supporting Obama’s statement that Trump is unfit for the presidency, with lengthy discussions of various mental disorders associated with the fascist billionaire, particularly his narcissism, which was raised as a campaign issue by GOP rival Bobby Jindal as early as last September.

Yahoo! News has provided a compendium of editorial writers who are deeply concerned about Trump’s insanity:

Is Donald Trump insane? That’s the question being asked in recent days by prominent columnists, both liberal and conservative, about the Republican presidential nominee.’3

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post has reluctantly come to the conclusion that Trump is “just plain crazy”:

‘“During the primary season, as Donald Trump’s bizarre outbursts helped him crush the competition, I thought he was being crazy like a fox,” Eugene Robinson wrote in an op-ed (“Is Donald Trump just plain crazy?”) published Tuesday in the Washington Post. “Now I am increasingly convinced that he’s just plain crazy,” Robinson continued. “I’m serious about that. Leave aside for the moment Trump’s policies, which in my opinion range from the unconstitutional to the un-American to the potentially catastrophic. At this point, it would be irresponsible to ignore the fact that Trump’s grasp on reality appears to be tenuous at best.”’

Neocon Robert Kagan of Brookings sees Trump as “not rational” and “a man with a disordered personality””

“One wonders if Republican leaders have begun to realize that they may have hitched their fate and the fate of their party to a man with a disordered personality,” Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a separate Washington Post editorial on Monday. “We can leave it to the professionals to determine exactly what to call it. Suffice to say that Donald Trump’s response to the assorted speakers at the Democratic National Convention has not been rational.”’

Liberal Republican David Brooks writes about Trump as an individual who is non compos mentis and really ought to become the ward of a conservator who would take responsibility before his safety:

“I almost don’t blame Trump,” David Brooks wrote in the New York Times on July 29. “He is a morally untethered, spiritually vacuous man who appears haunted by multiple personality disorders. It is the ‘sane’ and ‘reasonable’ Republicans who deserve the shame.”

Trump is known to be extraordinarily sensitive to criticism coming from his fellow billionaires, especially those of greater magnitude. Sports mogul Mark Cuban has expressed his problems with Trump in graphic language:

‘Another billionaire, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, also questioned Trump’s sanity. “Donald initially — I really hoped he would be something different, that as a businessperson, I thought there was an opportunity there,” Cuban told CNN while campaigning with Clinton in his hometown of Pittsburgh on Saturday. “But then he went off the reservation and went bats**t crazy.”’

Veteran GOP operative Stuart Stevens also suspects that Donald is mentally disturbed @stuartpstevens

We can gloss over it, laugh about it, analyze it but @realDonaldTrump is not a well man. He has serious problems.4

  1. http://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/paul-krugman-predicts-a-derp-spiral-when...
  2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-refuses-to-endorse-paul-ry...
  3. https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-sanity-mental-health-000000384.html
  4. 11:49 AM - 27 Jul 2016 https://twitter.com/stupolitics/status/758325851645743104