Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's Journalopinion Is Trump Out of Touch, Senile, Nuts, or Something Worse?
David Rothkopf
It was the cringiest of times. It was the craziest of times.
Welcome to a moment in which one of the most consequential debates Americans (and people the world across) are having is about whether the President of the United States is just a national embarrassment or has full-on blown a gasket. Is Donald Trump just three fries short of a happy meal, or is he full-on howling-at-the-moon mad?
One senior official in the last Trump administration told the Daily Beast of presidential appearances in the past few days that Trump “has definitely lost a step.”
With respect to one of those appearances, Trump’s meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell offered a similar observation, arguing that the president is “clearly off his game.” Like leaders in other recent presidential meetings, Carney “both humbled and humiliated Trump at the same time without Donald Trump having the slightest idea it was happening,” O’Donnell said, labeling Trump’s oft-repeated proposal that the U.S. annex Canada as “demented.”
That’s a sentiment that many others have also suggested in response to presidential initiatives—from seizing the Panama Canal to watching a TV movie about Alcatraz and hours later suggesting the decrepit prison facility, which has been closed for more than 60 years, should be reopened.
Each day we are forced to ask anew, and with more urgency, whether Trump is just an ignorant buffoon not up to the job or whether he is what they might have in the old days called catawampus, past-it, mentally unwell or even broken. How would you categorize the assertion that he doesn’t know whether he is obligated to uphold the Constitution? Has he gone completely Mad King?
Do his top advisers slather him with praise in ways that would make Kim Jong Un blush because Trump is just an egomaniac who needs to be surrounded by fluffers? Or is it something worse than that? Is he so fragile they fear the consequences if they don’t slide on the knee pads and polish his balls until they shine like the rest of his cheeseball throne room?
https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-trump-out-of-touch-senile-nuts-or-something-worse/
It's time to 25th Amendment the guy. Unfortunately there aren't enough G00Pers with spines to do it...And you just cant find a good assassin these days, as my DH has sighed many times.
Trump welcomes white South Africans, though other refugees are halted
After suspending the program for admitting refugees into the United States, President Donald Trump is making an exception for one group: white South Africans, who he claims have been victims of racial discrimination.
About 60 South Africans who belong to the white minority Afrikaner ethnic group ‒ classified by the Trump administration as refugees ‒ are expected to arrive in the United States on May 12.
For decades, South Africa was controlled under apartheid rule by the country's white minority, many of them descendants of Dutch colonists. Apartheid, a system of legalized segregation, deprived the majority of citizens of basic rights and forced many Black South Africans to live in ethnic Bantustans. It ended in 1994.
Now many white South Africans, who make up a minority of the population, say they're unfairly targeted by a new law that allows the South African government to seize property for the "public interest," in some cases without compensation.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/10/afrikaner-refugees-trump-welcoming-white-south-africans/83557827007/
So it's fine to let in more white South African Nazis like Eloon, but not anyone whose views MIGHT differ? Right, got it.
The terrible idea that led to REAL ID
It’s been 20 years since Congress passed one of the most onerous, useless and constitutionally dubious pieces of legislation in modern history. The so-called REAL ID Act comes into force today, and if your driver’s license isn’t REAL ID-compliant and you don’t have some other form of government-approved identity card, you won’t be able to board a domestic flight unless you’re willing to go through as-yet unspecified extra steps.
At its core, the mentality behind REAL ID is that every American is a potential airline terrorist first and a citizen of the Republic a very distant second. Who do we have to thank for this terrible idea? The 9/11 Commission. In fact, it was one of its core recommendations.
As the commission noted in its final July 2004 report, “All but one of the 9/11 hijackers acquired some form of U.S. identification document, some by fraud. Acquisition of these forms of identification would have assisted them in boarding commercial flights, renting cars, and other necessary activities.”
In response, the commission recommended that the federal government “should set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as drivers licenses.” The report noted: “Fraud in identification documents is no longer just a problem of theft. At many entry points to vulnerable facilities, including gates for boarding aircraft, sources of identification are the last opportunity to ensure that people are who they say they are and to check whether they are terrorists.”
But that entire notion is refuted by the fact that the most effective last-ditch protection against bad actors among the public boarding an aircraft is physical screening of the passengers and their luggage.
I’m not aware of a single post-9/11 incident in which an actual terrorist — such as the so-called shoe bomber or the “underwear bomber” — boarded an aircraft with a fake ID. Yet those two made it aboard aircraft with explosive or incendiary devices that could’ve brought down the planes they were on and killed all aboard. TSA’s struggle with passenger screening technologies and procedures is well-known and represents a far bigger safety issue than determining who is boarding a given aircraft.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/real-id-useless-raises-constitutional-questions-freedom-travel-rcna204996
REAL ID, as the article goes on to note, treats every American as a potential terrorist, which is what the TSA already does. And I don't have mine because I can't find one crucial document---my Mexican divorce statement. I also don't have my passport because of that.
Trump's treatment of 2 Russian women highlights a flawed immigration policy
On Monday, President Donald Trump met with Russian-American Ksenia Karelina, a former ballerina who was arrested during a family trip to Russia last year for donating roughly $52 to support Ukrainian aid in 2022. She was later sentenced to 12 years in a Russian penal colony for “high treason.”
Of course, Karelina’s return to the U.S. is itself major news. Last month, after UFC CEO Dana White discussed Karelina’s plight with Trump, the Trump administration negotiated a prisoner swap in which Karelina was released in exchange for Arthur Petrov, a German-Russian national indicted last year for allegedly exporting sensitive U.S.-sourced microelectronics. The release of the “young ballerina” was apparently important enough for Trump to involve the CIA — and ultimately resulted in the release of an alleged material supporter of the Russian military.
That Karelina is no criminal and deserves to be back in Los Angeles, where she works as an aesthetician, is without question. But her much-heralded meeting with Trump makes me wonder why the administration isn’t equally worked up about the liberty of another woman of Russian descent — one with a strikingly similar name.
Kseniia Petrova, a Russian Harvard University scientist, has been stuck in a Louisiana immigration jail for more than two months now. And like Karelina, she is young (both women are in their early 30s) and has reportedly opposed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, both women fell afoul of Russian authorities within days of each other: Karelina made her donation on Feb. 24, 2022, the day Russia began its full-scale invasion; Petrova called for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s impeachment on her Facebook page on Feb. 27 and was arrested before she managed to escape to the country of Georgia and then the United States.
Most importantly, neither has committed any crime under U.S. law. Yet while Trump has embraced Karelina, his administration has punished Petrova, a Russian national employed at Harvard on a J-1 visa.
On Feb. 16, Petrova was detained upon returning to Boston from Paris and was later transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Vermont and then Louisiana. Her alleged offense? Failing to disclose on a customs form that she was carrying “samples of frog embryos she had carried from France at the request of her boss at Harvard” and purportedly lying about them, reported The New York Times. Petrova, in a statement provided by her legal team, denied providing any false information and took responsibility for not reviewing the requirements for customs paperwork.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/analysis/ksenia-karelina-trump-petrova-russia-ice-rcna204894
Frog embryos? Seriously? It's just part of his war on Harvard.
Stephen Miller's Ex-Colleague: He's a 'Horrible Human Being'
A former White House colleague of Stephen Miller had some things to get off her chest about him over the weekend, revealing why she believes he is a “horrible human being.”
Olivia Troye, who served as homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence, scorched President Donald Trump’s top White House aide on a Sunday episode of the To The Contrary podcast.
“I think what you see is what you get with him,” Troye said when political commentator Charlie Sykes asked her about Miller. “He is a horrible human being. I think he is someone who has gone all in, down the rabbit hole, on extremism. And I think in his mind, there would be no migrants, immigrants, or any mixed race in our country.”
Troye said she had sat in many senior-level Cabinet meetings throughout multiple administrations but never seen anyone talk like Miller.
“I’ve heard him pontificate. He does it in a very bullying type of way,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone talk down to people in that manner and lecture them, and we’re talking about things like, when he would say, ‘Do you want a bunch of Iraqi communities around this country?’ He’s very specific in his language about it.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/stephen-millers-former-colleague-reveals-why-he-is-a-horrible-human-being/
Stephen Miller is a self-hating Jew, which is what makes him so dangerous. My daughter said the other day she heard someone call him "Pee Wee German".
Does a president need to uphold the Constitution? Trump says 'I don't know'
President Trump — when asked if he thinks he needs to uphold the Constitution on "Meet the Press with Kristen Welker" — said, "I don't know," but added that his lawyers "are obviously going to follow what the Supreme Court said."
The response came after a series of questions regarding the right to due process for people living in the United States and the Fifth Amendment. During this exchange, Trump said he wants to deport millions of undocumented immigrants — who he called "some of the worst people on Earth."
"I was elected to get them the hell out of here and the courts are holding me from doing it," Trump said.
Immigration enforcement was one of the top issues ahead of the 2024 presidential elections. It has been a strong issue for Trump, but recent polls show that Americans are disapproving of his handling of immigration.
Welker then pressed Trump on whether he, as president, needs to abide by the Constitution and the rights it provides to people in the U.S.
"I don't know," Trump said. "I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said. What you said is not what I heard the Supreme Court said. They have a different interpretation."
https://www.npr.org/2025/05/04/g-s1-64239/does-a-president-need-to-uphold-the-constitution-trump-says-i-dont-know
He swore to uphold it and he'd fucking well better do it. Anything else is treason.
Congressional Republicans don't want the blame for DOGE's mayhem
The chaotic efforts of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut federal spending without congressional approval have already led to widespread harms. Now, for the first time, the White House is reportedly planning to ask congressional Republicans to formally enact a share of DOGE’s damaging agenda into law. But though the first proposal is just a fraction of DOGE’s attempted cuts, Republicans in Congress are already having trouble taking responsibility.
Ironically, the administration would deliver the proposal under authorities and procedures outlined in the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 — the same law the administration has flouted for months while illegally withholding, or impounding, funds appropriated by Congress. Under that law, the Senate can approve a rescission package with only a majority vote — no filibuster allowed. But even with that lowered hurdle, the Trump administration is struggling to find much among its unlawful freezing of funds that at least 50 Republican senators are willing to publicly support.
The White House is in a bind of its own creation. The executive branch cannot legally cancel funding on its own: Congress decides how much money is made available and how it can be used. The administration can only lawfully delay the spending of that funding after it sends a “special message” formally proposing that Congress rescind — in essence, take back — those funds. And the delay can only last for a short time while Congress considers the proposal.
Of course, in the roughly 100 days since the Trump administration started illegally impounding funds, it has sent no such messages. The White House continues to trumpet DOGE’s deeply unpopular efforts, but as Elon Musk walks back his original inflated promises of savings, the Trump administration has dragged its feet on getting Congress to affirm its cuts.
Part of the White House’s problem is that any rescission proposal transmitted to Congress highlights that the administration has been illegally impounding funds — both those included in that package and, perhaps more crucially, those not included. Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee recently estimated that the Trump administration is actively holding up or fighting in court to block over $400 billion in federal funds. Already, the Government Accountability Office has opened nearly 40 impoundment investigations into different administration actions.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/doge-cuts-congress-republicans-trump-administration-musk-rcna204549
Considering that the disbursement of funds is Congress's job and not his.....
Top Dem's Aides Blow Whistle on His Disturbing Mental State
Staffers of Senator John Fetterman have sounded the alarm over the Pennsylvania lawmaker’s health and increased isolation as he navigates Washington D.C.
Fetterman‘s health battle has been documented at length since he suffered a stroke while running for the Senate in 2022. The stroke left him with auditory processing issues for which he still uses technology to transcribe what people are saying, to help him communicate in real time.
In early 2023, he spent six weeks at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center where he was treated for depression, just weeks after being sworn into office.
But a feature in New York Magazine has shed new light on the 55-year-old Democrat as former and current aides shared an inside look at what they’ve perceived as red flags with their boss’s mental state and erratic, even manic, behavior.
Some of the staffers, who were described as “his truest believers” are now questioning his fitness to be a senator. The article said they worry not just about him being a risk to the Democratic Party, but also to himself.
(snip)
Fetterman‘s behavior was so concerning that his former chief of staff Adam Jentleson wrote a letter to the medical director of the traumatic brain injury and neuropsychiatry unit at Walter Reed in May 2024.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/john-fetterman-aides-blow-whistle-on-his-disturbing-mental-state/
This article breaks my heart too. I have been worried about him since his stroke and don't think he is at all the same guy who ran for senator. A stroke, as I used to tell my patients' families, is the same as being hit with a baseball bat---it's a traumatic brain injury and can have severe lasting effects, although sometimes none at all.
MTG Unleashes Laundry List of Complaints Against Trump Admin
Outspoken Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has sounded off against the Trump administration in a lengthy tirade on the social media site X.
“I represent the base and when I’m frustrated and upset over the direction of things, you better be clear, the base is not happy,” wrote Greene.
The post fired shots at the recent minerals deal with Ukraine, the handling of the war in Iraq, COVID-19 vaccines, and election integrity, saying the Trump administration has so far failed to address concerns that frustrate “the base.”
“I campaigned for no more foreign wars. And now we are supposedly on the verge of going to war with Iran,” she said. “I don’t think we should be bombing foreign countries on behalf of other foreign countries, especially when they have their own nuclear weapons and massive military strength.”
While Greene resisted criticizing Trump directly, it is yet another step in the increasing distance she seems to be placing between herself and the rest of the Republican party. In March, she described the Signal group chat leak as “incredibly sloppy,” while last month she attacked fellow House Republican Anna Paulina Luna for voting with the Democrats.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-unleashes-laundry-list-of-complaints-against-trump-admin/
OOOOH, cracks in the foundation! I love it!
Woman in Florida deported to Cuba says she was forced to leave baby daughter
A mother deported to Cuba reportedly had to hand over her 17-month-old daughter to a lawyer while her husband, a US citizen, stood outside unable to say goodbye.
Heidy Sánchez was told she was being detained for deportation to Cuba when she turned up at her scheduled Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) check-in appointment in Tampa, Florida last week.
She was told her child, who has health problems and is still breastfeeding, had to stay in the US but could visit her in Cuba, NBC reported.
The Trump administration is embroiled in controversy for removing children who are US citizens from the United States with a parent when the adult is deported. In this case, the child was reportedly not allowed to leave with her mother even though it was what both parents said they wanted.
The administration’s anti-immigration crackdown has put many people in a difficult position because they risk being summarily detained and deported when turning up for routine Ice check-ins. Many people have followed this process without issue for years, and do not have a criminal record – but failing to turn up can bring an order for forcible removal from the US.
“They never gave me the option to take my daughter,” Sánchez told NBC.
Sánchez’s husband, Carlos Valle, is a US citizen. Both parents separately told NBC that their daughter is now crying all the time and calling for her mother, while Sánchez struggles to get WiFi service in Cuba to sing her daughter to sleep.
Valle was not allowed into the room where Sánchez was being interviewed by Ice agents with their daughter, attorneys told NBC. When told she was being deported, she was denied the chance to see her husband or hand over their daughter to him, with a lawyer having to fulfil that role instead.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/02/trump-florida-mom-cuba-deported
Talk about your catch-22! Meanwhile, kids with cancer are deported with their moms. WTF??????
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