I have been listening to Presidents make public comments since 1956 or 1957. Which means that Joe is the thirteenth President who I have heard say something to someone else. And in all those comments, I have never heard any President say something as stupid, as reckless and as totally bizarre as what Donald Trump said Monday night when he said that Putin should release more information about Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine.
Trump may not be aware of this, but at the moment the United States is fighting a proxy war against Russia, with our proxy being Ukraine. Which means that Putin happens to be an active military threat to the United States. And a former President of the United States is asking the man who is a military threat to our country to help him out with some political dirt?
This statement is far worse than when Trump referred to ‘shithole’ countries at a meeting of Congressional members in 2018 hoping, he said, to see more immigrants coming to the U.S. from places like Norway.
It was even worse than what I thought was his all-time dumbest comment, which was that there were ‘good people’ marching with Nazi banners and chanting anti-Semitic slogans at Charlottesville in 2017.
I used to think that the explanation for Trump’s behavior is that he was just an RDF. Born and raised in Queens, educated at a military school, a conniver and scam artist through and through, what do you expect?
But I think it’s worse than that. We elected a true sociopath in 2016. We elected someone who really doesn’t know the difference between good and bad.
Here’s a list of behaviors which every standard textbook on human psychology says are typical of a sociopathic personality: Disregard and violation of the rights of others, illegal acts, repeated lying, conning others, impulsivity, irritability, aggressiveness, lack of remorse, consistent irresponsibility.
After the 2016 election but before his inauguration, a group of psychiatrists wrote a letter to Obama requesting that Trump be given a complete mental evaluation to judge whether he was fit to be the next President. In fact, Trump’s behavior at that point was far less concerning than it became after he was sworn in.
Now that he’s just a private citizen, it’s not clear that he can be prevented from saying the kinds of things he said about Putin on Monday night, and there’s no lack of alt-right digital outlets that would ever turn down an opportunity to host an interview with Trump.
The truth is that Trump’s a sick bastard but he’s going to get worse. Which is because like every other former President, sooner or later everybody will begin to tune him out. And even though there has never been an ex-President who has tried so hard to stay in everyone’s face, it’s not working as well for Trump as it did just a few months ago.
The Republic Party knows that keeping itself beholden to a sociopath won’t work. And it won’t work because a sociopath is never satisfied, no matter how much attention, fawning and groveling he gets. Think that Trump’s comment about Putin was nuts? Wait another month and he’ll top that one a dozen times or more.
And there’s always the chance that one of the investigations of Trump will go beyond a press release and result in some serious charges – which by the way I happen to doubt.
The good news is that sooner or later two things will happen because they always happen in the political game.
First, Trump will get old and become physically unable to do much more than play a round of golf at Mar-a-Lago or sit in the lobby and charge tourists for selfies with him that they want to take.
Second, the RDF-GOP will come up with a new face to lead the party forward, or maybe lead it backwards, but either way there will be a new face. And the first thing the new face will do is tell Trump to shut the fu*k up.
I hope it doesn’t work. The best thing the Communist-Socialist Democrats have going for them is an opposition party headed by a sociopath named Donald Trump.