Reading Trump's Mind
'I gotta say, it’s been a hell of a comeback.'
Politico notes: “It’s been 38 days since Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene filed her motion to strip Speaker Mike Johnson of his gavel, a move meant to warn him against getting too cozy with Democrats . . . and yet: Greene—and the rest of the anti-Johnson movement in general—seems to have dissipated during the recess.”
Will Greene try to force the issue against Johnson this week? Time will tell. Happy Monday.
Reading Trump’s Mind
With respect for the late Bill Safire, the master of this genre:
Screw them all. Revenge and retribution are gonna be sweet. I’m gonna do it.
On January 7, 2021, after Pence betrayed me and all the weak sisters turned on me—“Ooh, I’m shocked, shocked. I’m resigning.”—I thought I could be finished. Ivanka and the creepy husband made me read that bullshit statement: “The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who broke the law, you will pay.”
Ha. Today my crowds cheer when I say I’ll pardon the J6 hostages. When I’m elected president again. Which I will be.
I gotta say, it’s been a hell of a comeback.
First I got My Kevin and the House Republicans—except for the ten traitors—not to vote for impeachment. Then the Old Crow lost his nerve in the Senate. We got stronger and stronger as my enemies dithered like the wimps they are. Then I beat them all like a drum for the nomination. Never even had to debate them. It was honestly easier than I expected.
And now I’m the nominee. For the third straight time.
Three in a row. Who’s done that? My man Andrew Jackson. FDR (God, my old man hated him). Oh yeah, some guy named Grover Cleveland did it in the 1800s. Who the hell was he? Did they name him after the city, or the city after him?
Anyway, that was sweet yesterday when Ron DeSanctimonious met up with me to bend the knee. It was a good Sunday—the Lord’s Day, as Mike used to call it. Can you believe it? What a weirdo that guy was.
Anyway, there was Ron, the guy the establishment squishes thought could take me down, bowing and scraping. It was a great day. Better than winning the club golf championship.
They say that it helps to be lucky in your enemies. But goddammit, I’ve been pretty lucky in myself too. What a three-year run for me. What a hell of a comeback by me. Better than Nixon. Better than Rocky.
Probably the greatest comeback of all time.
OK, OK, it’s not done yet. I gotta win in November. But I think I will.
Sleepy Joe had his little rally the last couple of months, but it’s petered out, and I’m still ahead. Tony told me I’m way better off in the polls now than at this time in 2016 or 2020. And this time I’m not the incumbent. Which is good, since the country and the world are a mess. Which they’ll blame on Biden.
I’d never say it publicly, obviously, but I was worried about a couple of things.
The trials. They looked tricky for a while. But the good judges have come through. Nothing serious will happen this year.
Yeah, the Bragg thing is a pain in the ass. But the worst case is I get “convicted” by a racist New York City jury—that won’t hurt me politically. Best case is a hung jury, which is a win.
Actually, and the fake news clowns don’t get this, the Bragg thing is helping me. Since it’s the only trial happening, it makes it seem like the whole legal case against me is about some business records and hush money. It’s good for me if people think this is what all the legal cases amount to. It’s why I do press conferences at the New York courthouse. It pushes January 6th farther into the background, which is good, because that’s still kind of a hard sell to some of the voters I need.
I was worried about abortion, since I get all those “pro-life” kooks yapping at me every time I try to back off. But it looks like we’ve got them under control, I’ve got the guys in Arizona working it out, and I think I can manage the issue.
You’re always going to have a couple of negatives, you can’t avoid that. The key is make them less important, and go strongly with your strong suits: the foreign invasion, the migrants, the criminals, the border.
Can you believe Biden still hasn’t done anything about the border? When I blew up the border deal in February, I thought he could do some damage to me. And Sleepy Joe said, I’m going to keep pointing out that Trump stopped tough action on the border. But he barely ever talks about it. Now it’s ancient history, and he’s doing nothing. Executive orders to help spoiled college students with their loans? Sure. Executive orders on the border? Zilch.
Speaking of the students, those kids and professors on the campuses are doing great. Roger keeps hinting he’s really behind it all, with dirty tricks and everything. That’s bullshit, but what’s happening is great. I don’t have to say a word about it, but I’m privately celebrating it very strongly. It’s helping me every day. But I’ll tell Roger that he needs to make sure they start up again in September.
I also think the economy’s gonna keep on helping me. My old real estate guys say the economy’s slowing, commercial real estate’s really going to be a drag, inflation’s not going away, and interest rates aren’t coming down. You gotta think Powell will give Biden one interest rate cut before the election. But it’ll be too little too late. Can’t believe Biden hasn’t gotten Powell to gun the economy like Nixon got them to do in ‘72. But Nixon was strong. Biden’s weak.
Also, the racist fake news won’t admit it, but Kamala’s going to hurt Biden this time. Four years ago, people didn’t pay much attention to her—but now? She’s gonna be president if he wins. Gotta remember to tell everyone to start talking more about the Biden-Harris administration. Sleepy Joe and Kooky Kamala?
I gotta take a VP who doesn’t lose any votes. Someone the wimpy suburban types will like. I saw that report about Burgum yesterday in Axios—what the hell kind of name is that for a news organization? Sounds like a Greek restaurant we once had in Trump Tower. Fake news, but they’re right, I think he’s the guy. Plus he’ll put in $100 million.
Kristi? I like her. Corey really likes her. And I like her shooting the dog. I hate dogs. But too risky.
Also you gotta like the idea of a VP debate with Burgum on stage against Kamala and RFK’s lunatic lefty running mate, whatever her name is. That’s a good look for us. People underestimate how much voters want old white men in charge.
So we’re gonna win. And then the fun will start.
You know, I had a weird dream last night. Roy Cohn was in it. He was always one of my favorites. And I was thinking, he began with McCarthy, he advised Nixon, but I’m gonna to outdo them all. Roy would be proud of me. When I get elected, I got to think of a way to honor him. He was ahead of his time.
But now it’s my time.
—William Kristol
Catching up . . .
House Democrats turn up the heat on Columbia University: Axios
Trump meets DeSantis, seeking to tap ex-rival’s donor connections: Bloomberg
Biden revisits his past in interview with Howard Stern: New York Times
Poll: Biden and Trump supporters sharply divided by the media they consume: NBC News
Gov. Kristi Noem defends shooting “untrainable” family dog: USA Today
Quick Hits
1. Border Deal Still Dead?
We noted last week that President Biden used his signing ceremony for new aid to Ukraine and Israel to call again for Congress to take up his border-security legislation: “I proposed and negotiated and agreed to the strongest border security bill this country has ever, ever, ever seen,” Biden said. “It was bipartisan. It should have been included in this bill. And I’m determined to get it done for the American people.”
But Politico reports this morning that that promise “was news to those involved in the first round of negotiations over the bill”:
Talks around resuscitating the bipartisan border compromise that senators struck in February have been nonexistent in Washington. And despite the president’s proclamation, administration officials and immigration policy experts both say it’s highly unlikely any legislative momentum for border security materializes between now and November.
“They pulled a rabbit out of a hat on Ukraine, but there’s no chance they’re getting anything out of Mike Johnson’s House on border security,” said an immigration advocate familiar with the White House’s thinking, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations with administration officials. “They’ve known that since December, when they realized they had to count votes in the House. There’s no chance of legislation on this, and they know that. It’s rhetorical posturing.”
2. ‘Donald Trump Did This’
Whether additional border legislation is incoming or not, Jill Lawrence writes for the site today that Biden should work harder to “seize the problem-solver high ground on immigration and border security”:
Immigration is the most pressing because of its salience to voters and Trump’s advantage on “who would do a better job” on it (for instance, nearly 2 to 1 in a recent poll of key swing-state Wisconsin, which is nowhere near the southern border with Mexico). And now it appears there’s growing national support for Trump’s mass deportations plan. Or, as Axios puts it, America is “warming” to throwing out an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants.
Americans may be warming to that policy in the abstract, but the harsh reality of families and communities torn apart, amplified across news programs and social media, would change that fast. It would be a reprise of Trump’s historically unpopular 2018 border policy of separating thousands of children from their asylum-seeking parents. Americans were horrified by the footage of crying, parentless children penned into what looked like internment camps. Six years later, voters should be reminded of that trauma—a nightmare easily conjured by any parent—and reminded that “Donald Trump did this.”
Cheap Shots
I couldn't help but bang my head against the wall, albeit gently, at the analysis this weekend of the CNN poll showing that more and more people are "nostalgic" for the DJT presidency. Leaving aside the notion that nostalgia is something usually expressed looking back decades more than just a few years ... what the hell is there to be nostalgic about?
Lies, more lies, and nothing but lies at every turn?
Encouraging and even empowering sympathetic thugs and racists to malevolent behavior toward anyone who opposes what they want and believe?
The daily grind of waking up and wondering what he already had said and done to piss people off around the world?
The barrage of personal insults and abusive behavior that would get any of the rest of us fired and friendless in no time?
The utter unwillingness to do actual work yet take credit for everything?
The complete lack of accountability that comes with power and responsibility, in both personal and professional settings?
Watching other world leaders openly mock and make fun of him, and by extension America?
And, above all, that romantic pandemic that he did nothing of consequences to prevent ravaging our nation (including dismantling the infrastructure already in place to prepare and minimize the impact) and had us wearing masks everywhere, uprooting our lives wholesale, hoarding toilet paper and other needed resources, trying horse medicines and gargling for a cure, destroying the morale and psyches of our health care professionals, and losing hundreds of thousands of loved ones who never will come back from the dead?
And so much more. Please tell me what on Earth there is to look back fondly on about those four-plus confrontational, antagonistic years -- assuming that self-serving, debt-inducing tax breaks for the fellow rich and multiple ill-gotten gains on the Supreme Court aren't your kind of thing. From where I sit there is no nostalgia to be felt. Instead it remains: how can we miss him if he won't go away?
One of the baseline questions a mental health professional asks a patient is, "Are you having homicidal, suicidal, or suspicious thoughts ?" Someone with Trump's cluster of personality disorders has those thoughts ALL THE TIME. He thinks about hurting/killing other people, buildings burning, etc. Kristol's little tongue-in-cheek exercise fails to capture the malevolence of someone with such a pathology, which is essentially untreatable. Trump is not the cloddish boor in Kristol's story but is instead a profoundly evil man. If the voters return him to power, there will be blood.