To Comprehend Trump, Read This
Three books and two magazine articles shed a lot of light on the president's baffling behavior.It's happening more and more: The phone rings and there's an old acquaintance on the line, often a mainstream Republican, asking, "What's wrong with Donald Trump?"
Instead of ranting in response, as I’d been doing for months, I'm now offering up a reading list. Here it is:
"Citizen Cohn," Nicholas Von Hoffman's biography of Roy Cohn.
"Don't Mess With Roy Cohn," a brilliant Ken Auletta piece in Esquire magazine written almost four decades ago.
"TrumpNation," an investigative biography by my Bloomberg View colleague Timothy L. O'Brien.
"The Art of the Deal," Trump's first book.
Jane Mayer's New Yorker article last year about the remorse felt today by Trump's ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz.
Cohn, the counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the anti-Communist witch hunts of the early 1950s, was Trump's mentor until his death in 1986. After McCarthy fell from power, Cohn became a New York power broker, introducing Trump to politicians and helping him cut deals. Cohn was a shrewd, ruthless bully whose philosophy, Auletta wrote, amounted to this: "Everyone lies, smears, covers up, protects their friends. The rules of the game don't count as much as winning."
Sound familiar?
(Cohn was a liar to the end, dying of AIDS while publicly denying that he was gay.)
Trump adopted his role model's attack-first-and-never-apologize tactics, on contemptible display last week with his vile slur against television anchor Mika Brzezinski. It's easy to envision the embittered president raging late into the night about dishonorable enemies and feeble defenders, asking himself what Roy would do.
Much more: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-02/to-comprehend-trump-read-this
= new reply since forum marked as read
But I ran across this in my travels tonight and it sure explained a lot - none of it good. 
It's more than annoying and usually makes little sense. But I thought this (not all that long) article explained a lot, though it's really RWers who should be reading this. I'd think it would piss them off, too - unless they were Joe McCarthy supporters. 
I would think what he's doing to their reputation and their "brand" would send them over the edge as much as it does to us. But they hitched their wagon to this monster and they're going to have to live with the consequences. It took the Republicans to bring down Nixon and it's going to be the same with Trump. Meanwhile, they're going to have to continue to tie themselves into knots to defend his behavior and they're going to pay a high price in 2018 - if we survive that long.
And it's not like he tried to hide it, he was the same offensive creep during the campaign as he is now. It never dawned on me that he'd ever be president. During the campaign I changed the channel whenever that orange face appeared on the news. I couldn't wait for it to be over so we'd never have to see or hear from him again. 
And all of DU is hoping that you get your wish! 
The one thing I won't do is refer to him as "president." Just the thought offends me. One of my wishes is that if they insist on referring to him as "president" on the news broadcasts that they're required to use air quotes... 
