Your Weekend Trump Dump

Two days ago, Donald Trump did an impromptu interview with the New York Times that has people again talking about his mental health. One of those is Ezra Klein who explains why he believes "The president of the United States is not well."

Want to get a second opinion? Glenn Kessler — fact-checker for the Washington Post — says that Trump made 24 false or misleading statements in thirty minutes. A few of these seem nitpicky to me but there are enough inarguable howlers in there to make you wonder if he really believes this stuff and is making decisions based on fantasy information.

And Trump has started arguing that the U.S. Postal Service should be charging Amazon more for transporting its parcels. The problem with that accusation, as Jen Kirby notes, is that the U.S.P.S. makes money transporting parcels. The post office is in bad financial shape because delivering First Class Mail is becoming increasingly unprofitable. You'd think a great businessman like Donald Trump would understand something like this but he's apparently too angry at the guy who who owns Amazon because he also owns the Washington Post that prints things like Glenn Kessler's article.

Meanwhile, Roy Moore hasn't conceded and will probably never concede an election that has now been certified for his opponent. A problem I always have with these "God is in control" people is that what they really believe (or insist is so) is that "God is in control and He wants me to always win." When they lose, that's apparently because God is not in control which cannot be because God is always in control…or something. William Saletan dismembers Moore's current argument which is so incoherent, it reads like Trump wrote it for him.

And through it all, no one gives a shit about a part of America known as Puerto Rico.

Your Thursday Morning Trump Dump

2017 was a year of record weather-related disasters. Gee, I wonder what could be causing so many of them.

Daniel Larison on the Trump administration's belief that we can bully other nations into doing what we want. The motto seems to be something like "Diplomacy is for pussies."

Trump claims he made good on his promise to repeal Obamacare and a lot of his supporters believe he has. But as Jordan Weissmann notes, it lives on.

Conservative writer Rod Dreher is dismayed (and for some reason, surprised) that right-wing news source Brietbart thinks it's right to slant its coverage in ways that help Donald Trump.

Kevin Drum notes that some staunch Republicans are getting real uncomfy as it becomes more and more undeniable that the current modus operandi of their party involves appealing to (and exacerbating) the worst racist tendencies in their base.

Donald Trump used to criticize Barack Obama for playing too much golf. Donald Trump promised that if elected president, he would not go out and play golf a lot. Donald Trump now plays way more golf than Obama ever did…and on courses that cost taxpayers a lot more money. And as Kevin Drum also notes, Donald Trump now plays golf and tries to stop us from finding out he's playing golf. The maddening thing about all that, of course, is that his supporters see nothing wrong with any of this. Their guy can do whatever he wants.

Speaking of "fake news" as we all must do these days, it's interesting to me how fact-checking sites like Politifact are now debunking different kinds of reports. They used to just do stories where someone got a statistic wrong or took a true story and spun it to mean something else…and there are still plenty of stories like that. But there are now a lot of stories like "Sasha Obama just crashed her expensive new car into a lake" or "Roy Moore takes the military vote, pulls ahead by 5,000 votes" where someone, probably to get clicks on a website, just made up something from the whole cloth. It's becoming very profitable in today's world to knowingly lie.

Finally: As I write this, an Alabama Judge has just rejected a court filing by Alabama Judge Roy Moore to stay the certification of the election he lost. Moore's insistence on embracing every nutcase theory that he didn't really lose shows why it's a good thing he lost his Senate bid. His judicial career before that was a shameful display of "the law is whatever I want it to be" masked in claims he was doing God's work. The head of Doug Jones' campaign that beat him thinks Moore would have lost — maybe by an even wider margin — if all that stuff about him dating and molesting teenagers had not surfaced. I'd like to think that's so.

Your Wednesday Trump Dump

What does the new tax law do? It drastically reduces the tax burden on really rich people, including a lot of lawmakers who wedged in provisions that help their particular financial situations. That seems pretty evident and we do not seem to have heard from many real economists — maybe even any — who think it won't drive the deficit way, way up. Remember when Republicans thought that was a horrible, disastrous thing to do? Kevin Drum has many of the bad features of this bill in easy-to-comprehend lingo.

Hey, what about those women who claim that Donald Trump sexually abused them? It seems to be the position of the Trump Administration that since he won, that means the nation is fine with whatever he did. William Saletan quotes a whole mess of polls that say that the country is in no way fine with it.

Trump is now claiming that the new tax bill fulfills his campaign promise to repeal Obamacare. Jonathan Chait explains why that's a lie.

And Trump claims that Republicans were 5-0 in Congressional elections before Alabama when in fact, as the A.P. notes, they were 4-1. I think there's a rule in his White House which is to never admit defeat. When you lose, just lie and say you won.

FactCheck.org lists some of the biggest lies of 2017…from Trump and others.

Fred Kaplan explains about Trump's new National Security Strategy. You may be shocked to hear that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense and, of course, make us less secure.

Your Wednesday Trump Dump

In the words of Donald Trump, let's go to the links…

  • USA Today says Trump is "not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush."
  • Matt Yglesias has a takeaway from the election last night: "The GOP agenda is toxically unpopular." He also notes that "Trump's net approval rating is lower today than it was for any previous president on record at this point in his term, and, remarkably, that's been true for every day of his presidency."
  • But Ezra Klein feels the way I do; that it's frightening how close Moore came to becoming a Senator and that so many Americans will disbelieve or ignore evidence if their gut tells them to vote for a guy.
  • Ron Faucheux has seven lessons that can be learned from last night. I agree with all seven.
  • Nate Silver thinks what happened last night is not a fluke. And he draws some interesting comparisons between Democrat Doug Jones grabbing Jeff Sessions' Senate seat in Alabama and when Republican Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts.
  • Jonathan Chait believes the Mueller investigation is in serious danger.
  • But Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux believes that even if Trump fires Meuller, it will not stop the investigation. We link, you decide.

If Roy Moore had triumphed last night, he'd be all over the place today saying it was God's will, God had mandated his win, God wanted his agenda to succeed. Apparently, the opposite is not true.

Your Tuesday Trump Dump

The Trump Administration is opposing laws that say that a business — like a baker of wedding cakes who won't bake them for gay weddings — shouldn't be free to discriminate. Its stance is probably because Trump believes this is what his base wants but I suspect it's also because Trump believes that the owner of a business should be able to do any damned thing he wants. Jeffrey Toobin reports on the arguments before the Supreme Court.

The Trump/G.O.P. tax bill may not be quite as much a "done deal" as most folks assume. John Cassidy explains why.

So now we're hearing that Robert Mueller is looking into at least some of the financials of Donald Trump and his associates. There are lots of folks out there arguing that Donald Trump is a great president, a man of God, a pillar of integrity. I suspect there darn near zero of the folks saying such things are confident that a probe into his finances will not reveal a string of dirty deeds — the kind that are done dirt cheap.

Matt Yglesias says that Democrats are decrying the wrong things about the tax bill. What's bad is the way it hurts poor folks and others who need the social safety net. What's not bad (necessarily) is how it grows the deficit…or so Yglesias says.

And finally: We're down now to the point where Roy Moore's defenders are saying, in effect, "Yeah, but let's give him some credit for all the teen-age girls he didn't molest!"

Your Sunday Trump Dump

Ezra Klein on how Republicans who once said debt would destroy America have now endorsed taking on more debt than anyone ever imagined. They're rationalizing it with this weird theory that this will supercharge the economy but very few of them seem to actually believe it and as Klein notes, "there is not a single economic analysis that agrees."

And by "not a single economic analysis," he means not a single economic analysis.

And as Jonathan Chait notes, no matter what happens, Republicans (and Trump especially) will declare the results a huge success and insist we should do more of it. Some are still trying to claim that "the great experiment" in Kansas was a smashing success.

Trump's answer to the F.B.I. finding so much wrongdoing in this administration? Fire all the agents and hire new ones!

And at the same time, Trump is now openly confessing to Obstruction of Justice and it looks like no one's going to do much, if anything, about it. Emily Stewart reports.

Matt Taibbi on what Trump is trying to do to the whole concept of the government trying to protect consumers from getting ripped-off by unscrupulous profiteers. This might be a good time for us all to become unscrupulous profiteers.

Daniel Larison thinks that Trump is about to make a bad foreign policy even worse. And Fred Kaplan agrees.

But, as usual, the greatest injustice in the world today is Hillary Clinton's e-mails. Some things never change.

Thursday Trump Dump – Special Tax Cut Edition

It's a firm belief of most Republican leaders that a big tax cut for rich people will lead to a much better economy in ways that will benefit the lower and middle class. In fact, it will be so good for the lower and middle class that it's okay to raise their taxes to pay for the big tax cut for rich people. It almost never seems to work out that way but when it fails, the usual response is to deny the failure and say, "Well, everyone knows it works so let's do more of it!"

  • The "Great Kansas Experiment" has failed so totally and disastrously that the Republican-controlled legislature has given up on the plan and passed tax increases over the objection of Governor Sam Brownback. This whole thing was his doing but no matter how far reality has failed him, he will go to his grave insisting it was a smashing success. Someone needs to explain to this man what the word "experiment" means.
  • Meanwhile, we're close to trying much the same thing on a national level. Study after study has resulted in projections of tax increases for the poor and middle class, huge windfalls for the rich, soaring deficits and massive cuts to social services like health care…
  • …but Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin insists it will be great for the country and that he has studies that show it will reduce the deficit by $1 Trillion. He just doesn't seem to be able to produce these studies. There are those who say there is no such study and there never was one.
  • But enough Republicans — even "maverick" John McCain — say they're ready to vote for the tax bill so it'll probably pass…
  • …even though they don't really know what's in it
  • …and even though the public is overwhelmingly against this plan
  • …because members of the "donor class" (i.e., really rich people, the ones who'll benefit from it) are demanding it.
  • Some architects of this bill are even arguing that the key to making sure it works is to guarantee everyone that it will never be reversed and that it must be permanent. In other words, when it fails and it gets repealed, its failure will be the fault of the repealers.

And Donald Trump is dying to sign this bill.  Has it occurred to anyone that the reason this man is adamant about not releasing his taxes is not because he doesn't want us to see that he has received so much of his wealth from Russia but because he doesn't want us to be able to track how much richer he gets while in office?

Your Monday Trump Dump

It's like every morning now, I wake up and say to myself, "Well, let's see what horrible thing he's done today…"

  • In his maniacal campaign to undo everything Obama did, Trump will be making Obamacare less affordable for everyone but mainly for those who voted for him in the last election. Kevin Drum explains this and notes that "Most of these folks don't seem to realize it, though. They'll either blame Democrats or else shrug and figure that at least Trump hates the same people they do."
  • And as Hannah Levintova reports, he's set off a war at the Consumer Protection Agency. I don't think there's anything Trump dislikes more in this world than Consumer Protection. In fact, the whole goal of the Republican Party now seems to be to ensure that nothing ever stops a large company from maximizing its profits. Not health concerns, not environmental concerns, not truth in advertising…
  • Ed Kilgore reports that as vital as Trump says it is to elect Judge Roy Moore and keep that Senate seat for the G.O.P., he won't go to Alabama to campaign for the man. He'll probably stay in Mar-a-Lago and compose tweets to use in case Moore loses…tweets explaining why that's not a loss for Donald Trump.
  • Here's a Visual Guide to the Key Events in the Trump-Russia Scandal. For an administration where everyone said they had no contact with Russia, there sure are a lot of them.
  • Ryan Lizza runs down some of the things Trump and the Republican Congress are going to try to enact next month so they don't end the year with no major legislative accomplishments. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
  • And by God, it looks like Trump is really trying to sell the idea that that Access Hollywood tape of him — the one for which he apologized — wasn't really him after all. Maybe he's going to insist it was Alec Baldwin.

Are there still people left who think this guy is a straight-talker? I can understand those who think — and I have some friends who feel this way — that the guy's a supreme bullshitter but that he's going to accomplish things they want to see accomplished. I really don't get those who believe he stands for truth or integrity or anything resembling a Christian Value.

Your Early Sunday A.M. Trump Dump

And we're expanding it to include Roy Moore, the people who still support him, and Joe Barton…

  • Remember the scandalous Access Hollywood tape wherein Trump bragged about sexual assaults? At the time, he apologized for it. Now, he's trying to spread the suggestion that it's not real; that it's dubbed or it's someone else or something. Even the Trumpiest Trump supporter won't believe that though a few might find it handy to say they do. It's a lot easier than defending it, I guess. But it makes you wonder if Trump is anticipating legal proceedings against him for sexual misdeeds and somehow — God knows how — thinks it will help him to now not admit the recording is legit.
  • Matt Yglesias explains why the math in the Senate Tax Bill just plain doesn't add up. And in this article, he points out that this bill is based on a lot of the same theories and predictions that were disastrous when attempted under the last Republican president.
  • William Saletan reviews the evidence against Judge Roy Moore and finds it pretty solid. He also reviews the rebuttals from the Moore camp and finds them pretty feeble. I think we're about to see a lot of people who profess to be deeply moral respecters of old-fashioned family values in an evangelical sense go to the polls and vote for a child molester…and pretend it's okay because, you know, he denies it.
  • Speaking of evangelicals, Thomas S. Kidd discusses who they are these days and why some who say they are aren't.
  • Rod Dreher writes about Joe Barton, the latest in a series of "deeply moral" politicians who spent years scolding people for their immorality before being humiliated by some revelation about the deployment of his own genitalia. It's gotten so every time a Republican leader lectures us about our sex lives, we should just start wagering on what there is about his that he's hiding.
  • Getting back to Trump: Daniel Larison says, "Arming Ukraine would be an extraordinarily foolish thing for Trump to do, and so it is probably what he will decide to do." Click on Larison's name to read more.
  • Jonathan Chait wonders if Donald is intentionally sabotaging police departments everywhere. And Chait's right: Whenever Trump talks about "crime" or "law and order," he's using codewords to single out racial minorities.
  • And finally for now: Matt Taibbi writes about Trump's battle with Sportsfather LaVar Ball. One of Ball's sons was among three basketball players arrested in China recently, then released via a diplomatic maneuver for which Trump is demanding a louder thank-you than he got from them. Trump vs. Ball is one of those cases where you'd rather not root for either guy but one is clearly worse than the other, if only because for the worse guy, it's just another chance to depict black athletes as spoiled and unworthy of this great nation of ours.

My favorite tweet of the last few days, by the way, came from Conan O'Brien who wrote, "Trump is already tweeting that Black Friday is the most ungrateful of all the Fridays." Good one.

Trump Trumps Time…Maybe

Donald Trump has long struck me as a guy who plays checkers, not chess — a man who doesn't have the ability to think 3+ moves ahead. He might not even see the value in doing that since time and again, he gets away with saying things that aren't true and pays little if any penalty for not being able to back them up.

But he may have out-strategized Time magazine on this "Person of the Year" thing. At first, he looks petty…

And then when Time tweets back, "The president is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year," he looks petulant and self-obsessed, as he so often does. But notice they didn't deny that they'd contacted him…or that he's likely to be their guy.

By tweeting what the man done tweeted, Trump probably figures he's set up this situation: If Time does decide to scorn him for the "honor," he's got the perfect rejoinder — "Well, of course I'm the greatest newsmaker who's ever lived but I told Time I didn't want their silly title but I told them to shove it so they had to go pick someone else."

And if they do decide they want to slap his smug face on their cover, he'll have a bargaining position to maybe influence the story somehow…maybe force them to switch back to "Man of the Year." Last year, when they named him "Person of the Year," he griped about the "political correctness" even though it made him the top of a much larger group. The point is he can maybe make them do something that will enable him to go to his base and brag, "I made that lying magazine kiss my ass." If he sits for a special photo and interview, he can put conditions on it. If he doesn't, he can say, "They had to give me the honor even though I told them to go to hell."

I don't think Trump knows beans about the law or the constitution or health care or how to deal with foreign powers…but he's really good at manipulating the press. That's why he is where he is today.

So if we worked for Time and we wanted to out-strategize him, what would we do? Well, the first thing we'd do is something he probably never does, which is to understand the rules. Read this…

Person of the Year (called Man of the Year or Woman of the Year until 1999) is an annual issue of the United States news magazine Time that features and profiles a person, a group, an idea, or an object that "for better or for worse…has done the most to influence the events of the year."

There's probably no value in pointing out that it's not always an honor and that in 1938, it was Hitler and in 1939, Joseph Stalin. That doesn't help us because in this day and age, being famous is way more important than just about anything else, especially to a guy like Trump. And if Time follows their stated criteria, he's again the obvious choice. No single person in recent history has ever been talked-about more than Donald Trump. I have friends who love him and others who hate him, both kinds unable to go three minutes without mentioning his name.

I don't think there's another individual we could name who would qualify…and before you suggest Robert Mueller, I think next year's likely to be his year. But take another look at those rules. It can be a group. We could name the vast and growing forces of Americans who disapprove of Trump's presidency. It would be a way of saying, "Yes, Trump is the core of more news stories than anyone else but mainly because so many people think he's incompetent and/or corrupt."

That might be a bit of a win for Time but Trump would just crow that that was demonstrating the hostility and bias of the Lying Media and "the failing Time magazine" so here's my other thought…

Name as "Person of the Year" — and I don't know exactly how you'd phrase this — the many women who have come forth to complain about sexual harassment and assault. They've sure generated plenty of news, especially the last few months. And if there's anything Trump doesn't want right now, it's a focus on all the women who've reported his behavior.

Your Monday Trump Dump

Jonathan Chait reveals the shocking fact that under the G.O.P. tax plan, the richest Americans get most of the benefits. Is there a human being on this planet who didn't think that would be the case? Seriously? If there's a bedrock policy in the Republican party today, it's that the government exists to serve the wealthiest people first and everyone else as necessary.

Kevin Drum meanwhile notes that the Republican plan also takes from those who vote Democratic and gives to those who vote Republican. Yeah, that's going to bring us all together.

Drum also notes a new report on how Russians sure did their darnedest to help Trump defeat Hillary. It's amazing how many people who voted for Trump because they felt he'd be tougher on Russia aren't bothered by that.

Donald Trump seems to be amazed and frustrated that the powers of the presidency do not permit him to order his political opponents be jailed or even prosecuted. As Ezra Klein notes, one of the things working against this man is that he seems broadly incompetent to use the powers he does have. And we can only imagine the Republican outcry if Barack Obama had wished aloud for the dictatorship that Trump wishes he was commanding.

Daniel Larison wonders if Congress has the guts to limit Trump's war powers, especially with regard to North Korea. I would say the answer to that in on a sliding scale somewhere between Absolutely Not and Definitely Not.

And lastly for now, we have Jeff Goodell on "The Climate Report President Trump Thinks You're Too Stupid to Read." Well, maybe Trump feels that way but it seems to me that what he believes is that there are enough people in America who don't want to believe Climate Change is happening to sustain his core principle that nothing should ever get in the way of a company making money. Those people don't really care what experts say. For them, a homeless guy screaming on the street corner that it's all a Liberal Hoax cancels out any number of actual researchers. Reality can be whatever you want it to be if you only listen to those who tell you what you want to hear.

Your Thursday Trump Dump

The Donald did another one of those interviews with someone whose sole motive was to make him look good. They remind me of the old Sammy and Company talk show where celebrities would come on and take turns describing each others' greatness. In this case, it was Lou Dobbs who was asking Trump in effect, "How did you get to be the greatest president ever?" Matt Yglesias summarizes how even with Dobbs feeding him the answers, Trump got most of it wrong.

Trump promised a new health plan under which everyone would be covered and everyone would get better care and it would cost us all less. Needless to say, we have seen nothing even vaguely proposed which comes close to that and many things seriously pushed that would cover fewer people, provide poorer care and give any savings to the very, very rich in the form of tax cuts. If Lou Dobbs weren't only interested in making Trump out to be a god among chief execs, he might have asked him how his initial promise could come true if Congress cuts $1.8 trillion from health care spending.

So it looks like the pushback to whatever wrongdoing Robert Mueller may uncover in the Trump administration is to claim that Hillary Clinton did what Trump is accused of…and Trump didn't. As Jonathan Chait notes, that's quite a stretch of reality.

Fred Kaplan dives deeper into the posturing of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly…and the problem of a military man moving outside the structure of that world and into a democracy where you get criticized by folks other than your superior officers.

And lastly for now: Ryan Lizza on how while a number of Republicans may rise to criticize Donald Trump and even call him a liar, he's like the weather. Everyone talks about it but nobody does anything about it.

Your Monday Trump Dump

Matt Yglesias has a good analysis of the recent Trump interview on the Fox Business Channel. Yglesias points out how Trump makes up facts — and even words you won't find in any dictionary — and how he doesn't seem to have a clue about the programs he supports or whether he supports them at all. I don't know what the people who support him think they're supporting any longer except that he's in favor of cutting taxes, banning a lot of immigrants, undoing anything Obama did (I keep waiting for him to unkill Bin Laden) and make remarks that upset Liberals. I suppose there are those who think that even just that last one is enough.

And speaking of cutting taxes: Kevin Drum notes that a lot of those who elected Trump are expecting a huge tax cut as their payback. The trouble is that every proposal to cut somewhere else to pay for those tax cuts has been ruled out. So I guess we're down to the premise that if we cut taxes for the rich, it will stimulate the economy so much that increased tax revenues will pay for the cuts. As the noted philosopher Rocket J. Squirrel has famously said, "That trick never works." But no matter how many times it doesn't work, someone still wants to try it.

Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) used to be in charge of investigating Hillary Clinton (and investigating and investigating and investigating and investigating…) and back then, he insisted it was not about politics. Now, he's in charge of investigating Donald Trump and of course, when anyone tries to press this investigation forward, Gowdy tries to block it, saying it's just about politics. Gee, I wonder what's changed. Jonathan Chait has more.

Jill Abramson of the Columbia Journalism Review writes about what's good and bad with the New York Times and its intensified coverage of Donald Trump. Odd how Trump keeps referring to it as "the failing New York Times," clearly referring to its success as a business. It's doing better than it has in years and to a large degree because people want to read the truth about him. But Trump lives in a world where if your business is going down, you're a loser and nothing you say or do is to be valued. It's an odd viewpoint for the man who gave us Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka and many, many others, plus all those bankruptcies.

And lastly for now: Dylan Matthews has the latest on Trump's ongoing war with those who think he is not respectful to those who've lost loved ones in military service. This whole thing became a big story because Trump doesn't know how to say "I'm sorry if I was clumsy with my wording and was misunderstood." Instead, he has this kneejerk reaction to go nuclear on everyone who criticizes him, calling them liars and digging up any other stray insults he can hurl their way.

Your Wednesday Trump Dump

Trump is suddenly all about calling and sending out letters of condolence to the families of soldiers who died in the line of duty. He claims he did not say the insensitive thing he is supposed to have said to one widow and that he has proof. But of course, when Donald Trump claims to have proof of something, we never ever see it.

Eric Levitz says that even with a Republican House and Senate, it's looking like Trump's tax plan is not going to make it. Wasn't one of the selling points for his candidacy that he was this great deal-maker who could negotiate anything and everything and get things done?

It looks like the U.S. has just about won the war against ISIS by following the strategies laid out during the Obama administration. This presents a problem for Trump since he has to take credit for everything good, can't give any to his predecessor and can't point to anything he did differently. What's the answer? According to Kevin Drum, Trump has started claiming that ISIS gave up just because they knew Donald Trump was president. Right.

Remember when John McCain was a maverick who didn't automatically side with his own party? Then remember when he wanted to be president so he became something else? Well, Jonathan Chait thinks the old John McCain is back…and is offering serious opposition to his party's leader, D.J.T.

And lastly: Chait thinks that all of Trump's ranting about how Obamacare is dead and defunct is prelude to Trump getting a few fixes made to it, rebranding it (maybe even as Trumpcare) and declaring it the cheaper, better health care plan that he promised everyone. You know, just like the wall he promised has turned into other, more possible variations.

Your Friday Trump Dump

Fred Kaplan on why Trump's Iran speech was full of lies and fraught with danger. I have yet to see anyone, even the loyalest Trump defender, explain in any real detail why his position is wise. Those who try at all — and most don't — say things like it's bold or decisive. But bold and decisive are not always right. I could make boneheaded decisions in bold and decisive ways.

As Jonathan Chait notes, Trump's newest Obamacare move is pure sabotage. But as Jeremy Stahl reports, polls indicate that voters are hip to this strategy and will hold Trump — not the institution of Obamacare and not the Democrats who gave it to us — responsible.

Sarah Kliff goes into greater detail as to why Trump's actions will make health care worse and more expensive in this country. You get the feeling this kind of mad-man destruction worked to Trump's advantage once in a real estate deal and he's sure it will work in this situation?

Andrew Sullivan makes a key point; that Trump is not trying to enact policies that realistic conservative leaders would ever offer. Here's one paragraph…

These are not conservative reforms, thought-through, possible to implement, strategically planned. They are the unhinged fantasies of a 71-year-old Fox News viewer imagining he can reconstruct the late 1950s. They cannot actually be implemented, without huge damage. And so he resorts to executive sabotage — creating loopholes in the enforcement of Obamacare to undermine the entire system. Or he throws a temper tantrum because Obama's Iran Deal is actually working as promised, and attempting to undermine that as well. At this point, the agenda is so deranged and destructive almost every sane senior member of his cabinet is trying to rein it in.

Susan B. Glasser notes that Bob Corker isn't the only Republican who has problems with Donald Trump. The list is growing.

And as Paul Krugman notes, Puerto Rico doesn't have the only Americans who are suffering these days.