Bob Woodward on a Nightmare Presidency

[Arkansas Granny]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/bob-woodward-on-a-nightmare-presidency

If Donald Trump possessed a soul, a trace of conscience or character, he would resign the Presidency. He will not resign the Presidency.

Trump is who he has always been, and the details that we learn with every passing day merely fill in the portrait with sharper focus and more lurid colors. The man who lied about the nature of the novel coronavirus to the American people (but confided in Bob Woodward) is the same man who, as a real-estate huckster, used to say that the best way to hype a new building was to “just give them the old Trump bullshit.” Deception is his brand.

It is hard to identify a constituency that Trump has not betrayed. A self-proclaimed populist, his greatest legislative triumph was a gargantuan tax cut for the wealthy. (“You all just got a lot richer,” he told his cronies at Mar-a-Lago.) A self-proclaimed champion of the military, he reportedly says “my fucking generals are a bunch of pussies” and refers to fallen American soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.” His lies and expressions of contempt are so routine, so numerous, that we grow inured to their gravity and even forget that only recently he was impeached in the House of Representatives, avoiding conviction thanks only to a conscience-free Republican majority in the Senate. Trump’s lack of stability is so pronounced that he inspires nightmares in his closest aides. As we learn from “Rage,” Woodward’s new book, Trump’s defense secretary, James Mattis, was so concerned that the President would set off a nuclear confrontation with North Korea that Mattis slept in his clothes in case he had to race to the Pentagon or the White House in the middle of the night. In his interviews with Woodward, Trump seems so hungry for approbation that, like a child, he spills news of a secret weapons system––“We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before.” (This weapons system is presumably different from the hypersonic “super duper” missile that Trump hinted at in May.)

[Iliyah]

1. I have four daughters . .

1 graduated from High School, class 2020, who had no graduation, no prom, no senior high school nada, and she asked me why did this happen to her and her friends.

number 2 daughter, 9th grade and was just coming out of her shyness, enjoying hanging out with friends, going places, straight A student. Computer school.

3rd daughter, pre-school and would start kindergarten when school starts in late August 2020, now computer school, same with 4th daughter who is still in pre-school.

The two younger ones, an adult must monitor them.

Across board, especially for middle class and the poor, it's a hard road.

I also know a friend and a relative that died from COVID-19. People out of work.

shithole and the republican party just don't care.

[JenniferJuniper]

2. I've seen my father three times since

he had to relocate to a nursing home in mid-May.

I get 1/2 hour visit once every other week at most - outside. Can't see him if it's too hot or raining. And he's less than 1/2 hour away. Soon it will be too cold to visit.

Fuck Donald Trump.