THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2026
And he's very good at flagpoles: "I'm very good at flagpoles," the sitting president said.
He said it yesterday, during a 32-minute press corps excursion. On CNN, Kasie Hunt described as "an impromptu tour of his various White House construction projects."
The man is clearly out on his feet. The comment recalls what he said to Haberman and Swan when they interviewed him in the Oval Office at the start of the current war:
From Regime Change, Haberman/Swan:
As he greeted us, the war seemed the furthest thing from Trump’s mind. On the Resolute Desk, instead of a map of the Middle East, were printouts of maple trees.
“I’m ordering trees for the White House,” Trump told us. “I know how to buy good trees.”
Plainly, he's out on his feet. He says he knows how to buy good trees, and he's very good at flagpoles.
The man is out on his feet. The press corps' refusal to come to terms with that fairly obvious fact is an astonishing part of our failing nation's journalistic culture.
It's especially amazing to see the press corps refuse to discuss this state of affairs in the wake of the situation which unfolded with the previous president.
That said, nothing is going to make them change. And when academics (quite rarely) attempt to speak, they end up losing their jobs.
It's in this context that the peculiar behavior widely attributed to executive assistant Natalie Harp takes on obvious relevance, though we recommend generosity here, even a bit of kindness.
Very unusual behavior seems to surround the sitting president. We'll plan on detailing what we mean when we return to this topic tomorrow.
Tiedrich addresses the same topic in today's rant:
ReplyDelete"yesterday morning, the oldest resident of the White House Assisted Living Facility managed to slip past his nurses and attendants, and wandered, lost and befuddled in an ever-thickening fog of dementia, onto its lawn, where he began to gibber incoherently.
“million-year life, it’s a very strong stone, it will never break, it will never leak, it will never do— this is the highest-quality stone you can get. and especially for something like this, it’s got— it’s rated million-year plus. that means it has a million year life. can you imagine that? it’s thirty five thousand pounds per square inch...”
what in the actual fuck? million-year what?
oh wait, the stupid shit is blithering about his farkakte helipad again, isn’t he?
yesterday, Donny gathered up the White House press pool, and dragged them all outside, so he could show off his latest vanity project that no one wanted, needed, or asked for.
while the entire world around us goes all to hell, this malignant toad remains laser-focused on stupid shit that absolutely does not matter to anyone but him.
listen to him, getting all excited about the million-year lifespan of granite in his Epstein Helipad. he’s so out of touch. nobody gives a shit, you self-absorbed, narcissistic fuck.
it’s stunning. Donny doesn’t know the first thing about his actual job — presidenting. he hasn’t the slightest clue about how tariffs work. ask him how a bill become a law, and he’ll just stare at you blankly. but ask him about how many pounds per square inch his helipad can withstand, and away he goes, blithering at warp factor nine.
who fucking cares? fix the country you broke, asshole.
but wait — I left out the best part. [Trump says]
“they’re putting the granite top on. and the granite top says ‘THE seal of— the United States of America. that’s the exact— term. if you look at, uhhh, the SEALS— of the presidents, ‘the Seal of the President of the United States of America,’ meaning— the president is— in the White House. this is for many presidents. this is in for— this is for— many presidents. they will have it for— a long time.”
what the fuck is this rat’s nest of word-adjacent noises that just tumbled out of Dear Leader’s rancid anus-mouth? hang on, did Donny just dumbfucksplain the presidential seal of office?
I swear, Donny’s brain has gone fuckity-bye. he can barely string together a coherent sentence, while he imagines that the meaning of the presidential seal is so impenetrably mystifying, that he needs to explain it to the White House press corps.
Donny shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the levers of power. he’s too cognitively collapsed... , sorry. Dear Leader isn’t finished extolling the virtues of his Epstein Helipad...
[Trump says]
“in fact, instead of being on grass now, they’ll be using that, almost like a table. uh, they can have events on it, they can have people go there for cocktails, and then walk to the ballroom, after that’s finished. we can have really incredible— this is unbelievable for state. without even having to go in the White House, they get out of the car, on the beautiful new roadway. they get out of the car, and they walk down this path, onto that, and then can have cocktails and everything outside of the White House and then they go into the ballroom.”
how nice for this oblivious imbecile, that — while We the People struggle to pay our bills — he can have cocktail parties on his fucking helipad...
this is the People’s House. it’s the seat of government, and it belongs to all of us. it’s not some place for Donny to hang out and shoot the shit with his oligarch cronies after he’s finished cheating at golf. the White House is not Donny’s personal plaything, to bulldoze and wreck as he sees fit.
nobody wants this shit. nobody needs this shit. We the People just want to be able to walk into a supermarket and walk out with a week’s worth of groceries, without having to take out a second mortgage our our home.
Everything Trump does will have to be undone later, since none of it is trustworthy and it poses a security risk, since Trump is beholden to various nefarious actors throughout the world like Putin, Netanyahu, Kim Jong Un, MBS, etc.
DeleteSomerby several times calls Trump "out on his feet..."
ReplyDeleteAI says "out on his feet" means being extremely tired, dazed, or close to collapsing from exhaustion, but still upright and moving."
It does not refer to the actual symptoms that Trump displays, which are part of dementia, not the result of hard work. Trump IS oblivious to his job, unconcerned about the problems he has created for our nation. He may be a bit tired from his odd sleep habits (also a symptom of dementia), but he is not showing exhaustion, mental or physical. He is out of it because he has front lobe problems that impair his thinking to the point were he cannot function as a normal human being, much less as president.
It is time for Somerby to stop pretending Trump is OK but just a bit tired. He has dementia. He is not going to get better -- just have a few spots of lucidity in an ongoing decline into cognitive oblivion. He needs to be put into a memory care facility.
Some physicians have commented that Trump returns to these construction projects because they are familiar to him when so much else is not. He feels competent and knows what is going on in construction, so that is a refuge for him. This construction focus is a symptom. We as a nation need to pay attention and do something about Trump's symptoms. He needs to be removed from office ASAP.
we recommend generosity here, even a bit of kindness.”
ReplyDeleteDammit, Ossoff, must you make such angry insinuations like “with Natalie?” SMDH.
Somerby: Actually Hitler was a sensitive artist who probably would have done nothing harmful if we had showed him some generosity, kindness, and pity.
Delete"It's especially amazing to see the press corps refuse to discuss this state of affairs in the wake of the situation which unfolded with the previous president."
ReplyDeleteThe press corps participated in a plot to remove Biden from his own reelection ticket. That is not the same as the situation unfolding with THIS president, who is manifestly unfit to serve, in ways that Biden was not. The comparison between Biden and Trump should make that clear. Biden can speak clear sentences that make sense, are appropriate to the context and follow a coherent line of thought. Trump cannot do that if his life depended on it.
It has occurred to me that perhaps Trump's cognitive difficulties are not evident to Somerby, because he has cognitive deficits of his own, ones that prevent him from understanding how normal thought patterns work and how sentences convey meaning. But there is so much else wrong with Trump that it should be obvious even to an old gipper like Somerby that Trump is not right in the head.
The obvious conclusion for a normally functioning person would be that Trump needs to step aside in favor of the next in line. That Somerby never says that himself, suggests that he is either paid to support right wing talking points (and the right isn't prepared to let Trump go yet) or he is a Republican and promotes right wing talking points for free.
Trump is not "out on his feet" but "out of his mind." It is time to acknowledge that and do something about it.
Tim Pool similarly claims to be a moderate, except he is a fervent Trump supporter who had a secret meeting with Netanyahu after his funding by Russia was outed.
DeleteThere are a slew of right wingers that have pretended to be liberal or moderate.
"It's especially amazing to see the press corps refuse to discuss this state of affairs in the wake of the situation which unfolded with the previous president." Oh, the irony. It isn't the press corps refusing to discuss this state of affairs, but Somerby refusing to acknowledge what is wrong with Trump. In that, Somerby is just like the rest of the right wing. They are too busy grifting to do the right thing for Trump.
ReplyDelete"It's in this context that the peculiar behavior widely attributed to executive assistant Natalie Harp takes on obvious relevance, though we recommend generosity here, even a bit of kindness."
ReplyDeleteNo, no kindness for Trump, for whom cruelty has always been the point. No kindness for Natalie, who is dishonest to the core, more likely opportunistic than crazy and may be manipulating Trump on behalf of anyone from Putin to Nick Fuentes. No kindness for the men and women who have been looting the country while Trump protects them. No kindness for Somerby, who has pretended to think Trump is merely crazy when he is obviously a sick old man who can no longer handle a daily routine, much less the presidency.
It is not startling how quickly Trump is deteriorating, because that is the nature of some forms of dementia, in his case likely Lewy Body Dementia, which goes from diagnosis to death in about 5-8 years (if someone is lucky). It is unkind to make Trump suffer in the public eye. The kindest course is to remove him from office ASAP. Somerby does not understand what kindness means in this situation.
ReplyDeleteThe state of affairs is such that the Dumbocrat party has committed suicide by refusing to honestly analyze its shocking failures, starting from the reign of Barak Hussain Obama, and continuing and intensifying until now. The old guard elite turned fascist, while new Maoist faction emerged.
That's the state of affairs, Bob. Meanwhile your TDS fantasies, that's just another illustration of the aforementioned Dumbocrat failure.
Fuck off
Delete3:01 doesn’t seem to pay attention to Bob too well. Bob contends that both things can be true: that Trump is crazy and also the Democrats have failed in certain ways.
DeleteMorose Somerby lamenting about how Trump is dragging down the whole Republican Party.
ReplyDeleteBoo hoo.
“the press corps refuse to discuss this state of affairs”
ReplyDelete‘Mary Trump—a trained clinical psychologist and author of Too Much and Never Enough—has made dozens of recurring guest appearances on major television networks like CNN and MSNBC, as well as numerous digital podcasts and news programs, since 2020.’
—Simple Google Search
From July 11:
ReplyDelete‘Earlier that day, Haberman had appeared on MS Now’s “The Weekend,” where host Jonathan Capehart asked her about Trump’s “mental acuity.”
The journalist emphasized she did not “feel equipped to answer” the question of Trump’s “mental acuity,”
“His health is like a black box inside that administration much more than almost any other issue,”’
Trump referred to her subsequently as “maggot” Haberman.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-maggie-haberman-health_n_6a5288f6e4b08b2da68d54d5
Woodward and Bernstein investigated Nixon‘s corruption, following leads, following the money, coming up with evidence. They weren’t concerned about Nixon‘s mental state, even though historians have postulated that Nixon may have had some sort of personality disorders.
ReTrump’s mental health, journalists run into this black box that Haberman described because neither they nor any mental health experts can do more than speculate or infer from Trump’s public behavior. As Mary Trump said, Donald will never sit for an evaluation. Trump and his enablers will stonewall. There are no good republicans nowadays like the ones who urged Nixon to resign.
And it goes without saying that the Republican Party seem A-OK with Trump‘s massive corruption. So there you go.
"And when academics (quite rarely) attempt to speak, they end up losing their jobs."
ReplyDeleteThis is not the time for academics to speak. They do not have the expertise required. It is time for the White House medical staff to conduct a thorough examination of Trump and report the findings to Congress and the VP. Then the process of applying Article 25 can begin. Academics have nothing to do with this.
Somerby may be alluding to Bandy Lee. She lost her job at Yale because she let her medical license lapse in CT and when she tried to renew it, they declined due to her breach of professional ethics (diagnosing a person who she had not examined). She still works in New York, where her license is intact. A working forensic psychiatrist is not an academic.
The people who need to diagnose Trump are licensed specialists in medical fields, including neurology, neuropsychiatry, gerontology, cardiology, vascular specialists (especially in vascular dementia). I suspect they already know what is wrong with Trump, but have been withholding that info out of either pressure/fear or partisan profit. That info needs to be made public so that our government (Congress, the Cabinet, the VP) can do their jobs.
It seems to me that a lawsuit could ask a judge to require Trump to sit for a health examination. It would be better if it were bipartisan and came from Congress members, perhaps as the result of a bill passed requiring the president to be examined under concerning circumstances. That could perhaps happen after the midterms.
ReplyDelete“Jamie Raskin (D-MD) introduced legislation to create a 17-member independent, nonpartisan commission to evaluate a president's mental and physical fitness under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. He first proposed a similar measure in 2020”
DeleteWe know where this idea went.
It may go somewhere with a Democratic majority.
DeleteThere is no point in talking about Trump like a normal political leader, when he is not one.
ReplyDeleteStill waiting on those Epstein files.
ReplyDeleteGas has hit $4 a gallon in my rural red state.
ReplyDeleteToday might be a good day to ask, what the fuck is Jared the grifter Kushner doing negotiating war and peace with America's enemy? Has he purchased any new islands in the Mediterranean recently?
Delete