Trump's professor at Penn's prestigious Wharton School, William T. Kelley, stated "Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had."
Trump traded in a formal education and even the development of a vocabulary beyond the 4th grade for the life of a morally dissolute playboy after his father arranged for him to evade the draft to join the family's real estate firm.
Over the years, Trump hungered for more and more publicity and constantly appeared in the tabloids surrounded by fawning women. We now know that along the route, he bragged about grabbing women by their genitals, one of whom successfully sued him for sexual molestation and defamation, cheating on his wives and cooking his company's books to "catch and kill" the revelation of his sexual forays with a porn star.
He also managed to set up a self-glorifying university which turned out to be a fraud on its students, as did his applications to numerous creditors whom he swindled out of hundreds of millions of dollars by vastly overvaluing his assets.
So how did Donald Trump get to go from being a rich dissolute playboy with the morals of an alley cat to being a rich dissolute President with the morals of an alley cat?
The closest explanation I can think of is by means of a riff on a comment made by Samuel Johnson to his biographer James Boswell about an acquaintance: " Sir, he was repugnant in his company, he was repugnant in his style, he was repugnant everywhere. He was repugnant in a new way and that made many people think him great."
Yes. He was repugnant in a new way. Paying a ghostwriter to write "The Art of the Deal" in Trump's name and with his wealth, swagger, ego and bluster, this blowhard and clown came to be the perfect sitcom attraction for prime-time t.v. And the more he growled, grated, gloated, grimaced and glamorized himself on t.v., the greater his audience swelled to be entertained by his bloated ego, bombast and put-downs.
In short. No one had even seen such a pompous, obnoxious and egotistical blowhard before, with the possible exception of Don Rickles's onstage persona. He was novel and refreshing, and offered a new face and style to enter the political arena with the support of right-wing conservatives, along with wealthy and influential friends, domestic and foreign, who learned how to manipulate his insecurities through flattery, money and promises of power.
During his first term in office, the dark side of him palpably emerged, in which he revealed his insecurity and desperation and lust for power and admiration, relying on lies and self-delusions to sustain his mental equilibrium. Over time, even his staff openly admitted that he relied on conjuring "alternate truths " and "alternate facts" to hold his world of illusions together. Even his niece, a psychologist with a Ph. D. in psychology, has openly referred to his serious mental unbalance and delusions of grandeur.
As we all too painfully know, his unwillingness to accept reality and to accept defeat in the 2020 election led to his desperate lies to his gullible cult followers that he actually won the election, though he was unable to convince a single court among the 80+ law suits he filed that his election was stolen. To this day, he is mentally incapable of letting go of his delusion that he won the 2020 election.
And while his victory in 2024 was more a repudiation of Joe Biden than a vote of confidence in him, he still cannot let go of the fact that he was a loser and that most people know he was and may still be.
I believe that it this obsession to crush his perceived enemies and non-believers through promises, threats, manipulations and extortion, and blackmail that drives his every waking hour.
And though Donald Trump now believes that he is on the verge of dominating every facet of life in the United States, it is not enough to satiate his unquenchable ego.
It is the entire world to which he now looks to become the Master of the Universe by turning upside down every country's economy and evoking the fear and admiration of every human being on this planet, all of whose lips will now be talking about the mighty and powerful Donald Trump.
So at what price to all of us does Trump aspire to be top of the world?
It conjures up visions of Jimmy Cagney's movie character's self-immolation shouting:
Are Trump's tariffs an attempt to weaken and subjugate the other billionaires and corporations? Will it work or will they take him down with the 25th amendment by pressuring the cabinet or the Congress to impeach? I can't believe he will have power and control over them. He will at the least have a sudden MI or cerebral vascular accident.
Chris Murphy (CT Senator) and a few others have written at length about this - it’s a continuing (ongoing? never-ending?) grift and efforts to get individuals, corporations, countries to “make deals” with them for favors. It’s extortion, among other things. I wish I had some hope that the current Congress will do ANYTHING to stop or stymie him (and I would LOVE to be wrong about that).
That's right. The domestic tariffs will force businesses to line up and make "deals" to gain Trump's exemptions. The foreign tariffs will be negotiated down as long as those countries do what he demands and he can make favorable "deals" with them.
His sycophants don't even try and deny this is all about Trump getting personal leverage for his own benefit.
Many have commented that there are no tariffs on Russia. Since sanctions remain in place there is damn little trade going on with Russia PLUS he does not want to aggravate Putin because he needs Putin to strike a deal with Ukraine so Trump will get his long coveted Nobel Peace Prize. One can only wonder what pressures he can bring to bear on the Nobel committee in his lust for the prize.
I don’t see the Nobel committee caving to any pressures he could apply to them. And I hope I’m correct in my prediction on this.
That said, Donnie really (really, really, really) wants one of those “Noble” Prizes. Kind of like the Purple Heart some misguided cultist gave to him years ago.
Yes, his sycophants don’t deny that this is all about getting personal leverage - which they seem to assume that they will share in - which also indicates that they haven’t been paying attention to his history.
Good Article, completely understand, completely agree.
But we need to know…. who do we boycott, how do we encourage Courage from universities and law firms, how do we get leaders to start messaging in a way that is clear and concise and not scattered with every flare Trump throws….As seen yesterday there is tremendous desire to stop the madness, we need leaders telling us, beyond or in addition to rallies and protests, what can we do??
The 5 million strong protests yesterday were a very good start to what must become a massive movement. The American people are the sleeping giant that can take Trump down, and they ARE starting to awaken. This summer must be the season of our discontent, where we show those cruel, ignorant, indecent, undemocratic, MAGA fools know that we are DONE with them and that we WILL take our country back. Protests, national strikes, civil disobedience that is NOT violent, outreach, and politicking must all be used in force. We CAN do this, America!
Via X, Trump claims he is crashing the market on purpose.. Let's make an exception and accept what he says to be true. Let's consider that to be a confession. Let's impeach him for it.
Pitching a broad tent ... is not to be done tentatively or last minute (after exhausting all other options) by the only standing opposition party, the Democrats. Most Democrats, Independents and Moderate Republicans can find enough consensus within this new Big Tent. There will need to be some compromising for a successful 2026 season AND to help civil servants, attorneys, universities etc claw back what has been stripped from them. Efforts should also be made to target selected incumbent Republicans to bolt soon given the changing winds. This can rein in some of the most devastating tyranny.
Let’s ask ourselves what are the 3 unfettered powers of this president. Here you go:
Tariffs,Pardons &Deportations.
And what does Trump love the most besides adulation and size of things…unfettered power.
Time for us all to wake up and relieve him of these destructive powers by weakening his powers through the courts and elections. He does these horrible things because he can.
Well-reasoned, poignant … but, I fear, ignored by the ignorant who are spoiling to revenge imagined injuries. And to spout White is Right lunacies when proof of its inadequacies are right before our eyes. Trump turns his back on Americans, and his lackeys cheer .
What we can do such an important topic. But when Diamond brings in the detention of Mahmoud Khalil and cutting the funding for Columbia University, he loses all credibility with me. Khalil is a Hamas enabler and apologist. Whether or not Khalil loses his permanent resident status or not is up to an immigrations judge. But because of his enthusiasm for a Jihadist terrorist organization, he probably will and should lose his visa.
After the virulent Jew Hate that was unleashed and fulminated over social media at Columbia, as far as I'm concerned, they can't lose their funding fast enough.
What's going on under the guise of "free-speech" on college campuses part of a strategy set out by Islamists in the early '90s. This fundamentalist branch of Islam IS intent on making the entire world into a Muslim Califate. Don't believe me? Listen to Lara Burns, formerly of the FBI: https://youtu.be/U7a7zL_sslY?si=jvLzkoGBwTwxQDit
To The Contrary isn't going to get anywhere as long as it heeds to perverse and counterproductive Dem policy.
Your list of next steps forgot to include hate. Fascist enjoy being cruel to whomever they can be. For Hitler it was jews, homosexuals, and the mentally ill. For MAGA it's trans, blacks and women. Haters gotta hate.
I was at the NYC protest. It was massive and completely peaceful. I agree, it is so important it stays that way. There was virtually no police presence (I’m not going to speculate why, but it was very, very odd-not even traffic control, volunteers did that). If anything had popped off it could have gotten very bad, very fast. I’m so proud of everyone who showed up on Saturday and I was proud to be part of it!
When we protest we must also protest the people who built Trump’s power. Trump couldn’t have done this without mobilizing the haters. What do they hate? They hate all the corruption Democrats and Republicans have allowed - in particular the corruption that turned our schools close to useless and quite unsafe. Even now as democracy is disintegrating no one is fessing up about our schools - the institution that was to uphold democracy. Listen to the teacher whistleblowers at WhiteChalkCrime.com Give them a voice. This mess all started because fascists took over our schools and will only end when we restore authentic schools, an impossibility if everyone continues to ignore the root cause for the loss of democracy.
Your problem is, if and when you do cobble it all back together, nothing will be fundamentally fixed. Your broken system can't continue like it has, you need to rewrite your constitution but never can. This is the first Trump but not the last.
" MADE IT MA! TOP OF THE WORLD!"
Trump's professor at Penn's prestigious Wharton School, William T. Kelley, stated "Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had."
Trump traded in a formal education and even the development of a vocabulary beyond the 4th grade for the life of a morally dissolute playboy after his father arranged for him to evade the draft to join the family's real estate firm.
Over the years, Trump hungered for more and more publicity and constantly appeared in the tabloids surrounded by fawning women. We now know that along the route, he bragged about grabbing women by their genitals, one of whom successfully sued him for sexual molestation and defamation, cheating on his wives and cooking his company's books to "catch and kill" the revelation of his sexual forays with a porn star.
He also managed to set up a self-glorifying university which turned out to be a fraud on its students, as did his applications to numerous creditors whom he swindled out of hundreds of millions of dollars by vastly overvaluing his assets.
So how did Donald Trump get to go from being a rich dissolute playboy with the morals of an alley cat to being a rich dissolute President with the morals of an alley cat?
The closest explanation I can think of is by means of a riff on a comment made by Samuel Johnson to his biographer James Boswell about an acquaintance: " Sir, he was repugnant in his company, he was repugnant in his style, he was repugnant everywhere. He was repugnant in a new way and that made many people think him great."
Yes. He was repugnant in a new way. Paying a ghostwriter to write "The Art of the Deal" in Trump's name and with his wealth, swagger, ego and bluster, this blowhard and clown came to be the perfect sitcom attraction for prime-time t.v. And the more he growled, grated, gloated, grimaced and glamorized himself on t.v., the greater his audience swelled to be entertained by his bloated ego, bombast and put-downs.
In short. No one had even seen such a pompous, obnoxious and egotistical blowhard before, with the possible exception of Don Rickles's onstage persona. He was novel and refreshing, and offered a new face and style to enter the political arena with the support of right-wing conservatives, along with wealthy and influential friends, domestic and foreign, who learned how to manipulate his insecurities through flattery, money and promises of power.
During his first term in office, the dark side of him palpably emerged, in which he revealed his insecurity and desperation and lust for power and admiration, relying on lies and self-delusions to sustain his mental equilibrium. Over time, even his staff openly admitted that he relied on conjuring "alternate truths " and "alternate facts" to hold his world of illusions together. Even his niece, a psychologist with a Ph. D. in psychology, has openly referred to his serious mental unbalance and delusions of grandeur.
As we all too painfully know, his unwillingness to accept reality and to accept defeat in the 2020 election led to his desperate lies to his gullible cult followers that he actually won the election, though he was unable to convince a single court among the 80+ law suits he filed that his election was stolen. To this day, he is mentally incapable of letting go of his delusion that he won the 2020 election.
And while his victory in 2024 was more a repudiation of Joe Biden than a vote of confidence in him, he still cannot let go of the fact that he was a loser and that most people know he was and may still be.
I believe that it this obsession to crush his perceived enemies and non-believers through promises, threats, manipulations and extortion, and blackmail that drives his every waking hour.
And though Donald Trump now believes that he is on the verge of dominating every facet of life in the United States, it is not enough to satiate his unquenchable ego.
It is the entire world to which he now looks to become the Master of the Universe by turning upside down every country's economy and evoking the fear and admiration of every human being on this planet, all of whose lips will now be talking about the mighty and powerful Donald Trump.
So at what price to all of us does Trump aspire to be top of the world?
It conjures up visions of Jimmy Cagney's movie character's self-immolation shouting:
"Made It Ma !Top of the World!"
Are Trump's tariffs an attempt to weaken and subjugate the other billionaires and corporations? Will it work or will they take him down with the 25th amendment by pressuring the cabinet or the Congress to impeach? I can't believe he will have power and control over them. He will at the least have a sudden MI or cerebral vascular accident.
Chris Murphy (CT Senator) and a few others have written at length about this - it’s a continuing (ongoing? never-ending?) grift and efforts to get individuals, corporations, countries to “make deals” with them for favors. It’s extortion, among other things. I wish I had some hope that the current Congress will do ANYTHING to stop or stymie him (and I would LOVE to be wrong about that).
That's right. The domestic tariffs will force businesses to line up and make "deals" to gain Trump's exemptions. The foreign tariffs will be negotiated down as long as those countries do what he demands and he can make favorable "deals" with them.
His sycophants don't even try and deny this is all about Trump getting personal leverage for his own benefit.
Many have commented that there are no tariffs on Russia. Since sanctions remain in place there is damn little trade going on with Russia PLUS he does not want to aggravate Putin because he needs Putin to strike a deal with Ukraine so Trump will get his long coveted Nobel Peace Prize. One can only wonder what pressures he can bring to bear on the Nobel committee in his lust for the prize.
I don’t see the Nobel committee caving to any pressures he could apply to them. And I hope I’m correct in my prediction on this.
That said, Donnie really (really, really, really) wants one of those “Noble” Prizes. Kind of like the Purple Heart some misguided cultist gave to him years ago.
Yes, his sycophants don’t deny that this is all about getting personal leverage - which they seem to assume that they will share in - which also indicates that they haven’t been paying attention to his history.
All of this. All of this.
Good Article, completely understand, completely agree.
But we need to know…. who do we boycott, how do we encourage Courage from universities and law firms, how do we get leaders to start messaging in a way that is clear and concise and not scattered with every flare Trump throws….As seen yesterday there is tremendous desire to stop the madness, we need leaders telling us, beyond or in addition to rallies and protests, what can we do??
This all started with Reagan and Friedman.
The 5 million strong protests yesterday were a very good start to what must become a massive movement. The American people are the sleeping giant that can take Trump down, and they ARE starting to awaken. This summer must be the season of our discontent, where we show those cruel, ignorant, indecent, undemocratic, MAGA fools know that we are DONE with them and that we WILL take our country back. Protests, national strikes, civil disobedience that is NOT violent, outreach, and politicking must all be used in force. We CAN do this, America!
Via X, Trump claims he is crashing the market on purpose.. Let's make an exception and accept what he says to be true. Let's consider that to be a confession. Let's impeach him for it.
Pitching a broad tent ... is not to be done tentatively or last minute (after exhausting all other options) by the only standing opposition party, the Democrats. Most Democrats, Independents and Moderate Republicans can find enough consensus within this new Big Tent. There will need to be some compromising for a successful 2026 season AND to help civil servants, attorneys, universities etc claw back what has been stripped from them. Efforts should also be made to target selected incumbent Republicans to bolt soon given the changing winds. This can rein in some of the most devastating tyranny.
Bravo! Exactly right in describing the threat and the solution.
Let’s ask ourselves what are the 3 unfettered powers of this president. Here you go:
Tariffs,Pardons &Deportations.
And what does Trump love the most besides adulation and size of things…unfettered power.
Time for us all to wake up and relieve him of these destructive powers by weakening his powers through the courts and elections. He does these horrible things because he can.
Well-reasoned, poignant … but, I fear, ignored by the ignorant who are spoiling to revenge imagined injuries. And to spout White is Right lunacies when proof of its inadequacies are right before our eyes. Trump turns his back on Americans, and his lackeys cheer .
What we can do such an important topic. But when Diamond brings in the detention of Mahmoud Khalil and cutting the funding for Columbia University, he loses all credibility with me. Khalil is a Hamas enabler and apologist. Whether or not Khalil loses his permanent resident status or not is up to an immigrations judge. But because of his enthusiasm for a Jihadist terrorist organization, he probably will and should lose his visa.
After the virulent Jew Hate that was unleashed and fulminated over social media at Columbia, as far as I'm concerned, they can't lose their funding fast enough.
What's going on under the guise of "free-speech" on college campuses part of a strategy set out by Islamists in the early '90s. This fundamentalist branch of Islam IS intent on making the entire world into a Muslim Califate. Don't believe me? Listen to Lara Burns, formerly of the FBI: https://youtu.be/U7a7zL_sslY?si=jvLzkoGBwTwxQDit
To The Contrary isn't going to get anywhere as long as it heeds to perverse and counterproductive Dem policy.
Hey everyone there is going to be a parade to celebrate our taking back of our country.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5236112-trump-plans-june-14-military-parade/
Your list of next steps forgot to include hate. Fascist enjoy being cruel to whomever they can be. For Hitler it was jews, homosexuals, and the mentally ill. For MAGA it's trans, blacks and women. Haters gotta hate.
I was at the NYC protest. It was massive and completely peaceful. I agree, it is so important it stays that way. There was virtually no police presence (I’m not going to speculate why, but it was very, very odd-not even traffic control, volunteers did that). If anything had popped off it could have gotten very bad, very fast. I’m so proud of everyone who showed up on Saturday and I was proud to be part of it!
When we protest we must also protest the people who built Trump’s power. Trump couldn’t have done this without mobilizing the haters. What do they hate? They hate all the corruption Democrats and Republicans have allowed - in particular the corruption that turned our schools close to useless and quite unsafe. Even now as democracy is disintegrating no one is fessing up about our schools - the institution that was to uphold democracy. Listen to the teacher whistleblowers at WhiteChalkCrime.com Give them a voice. This mess all started because fascists took over our schools and will only end when we restore authentic schools, an impossibility if everyone continues to ignore the root cause for the loss of democracy.
Your problem is, if and when you do cobble it all back together, nothing will be fundamentally fixed. Your broken system can't continue like it has, you need to rewrite your constitution but never can. This is the first Trump but not the last.