Desperate measures, manipulating the process, the results, anything that can result in staying in power. April Ryan on CNN stated that Trump “looks like he’s in decline, not just mentally but physically.”
Donald Trump is not only the most improbable, confounding president America has ever produced; he is also clearly the worst. In less than four years, he has plunged the country into deep turmoil. Reasonable people now worry that he has eroded American democracy beyond repair. The most dangerous period yet, November’s election, still lies ahead, but Trump has already signaled his intent to discredit the result if he loses, and to take unusual and possibly illegal steps to ensure a victory.
Trump’s most alarming attribute as president is that he observes no boundaries. Social, civic, moral, and legal norms are meaningless to him. He spends a great deal of time alone with his cell phone and his television, letting his id do the tweeting. His aides and allies are often taken aback by what spews forth.
www.project-syndicate.org/…
Trump gives a ‘Domestic Terror Movement’ a ‘Wink and a Nod’ in preparation for Election Day
The president or his loyalists threaten to upend some policy, institution or norm they know others will fight to defend. Issuing the challenge can be easy: a speech, a leak, a tweet or two, about immigration rules or education regulations or cutting taxes on the rich. In response, Trump’s opponents must invest substantial time, money and effort to resist the proposal — otherwise, Trump wins by default.
Essentially, the administration has weaponized wasting everyone else’s time.
[...]
Once again, the administration has hit upon a low-cost way to make opponents spend time and energy. “If time is a political resource of value,” Syracuse University professor Elizabeth Cohen said, “then anything you can do to force people to spend their time on what you want them to do, not the work they would want to do, is effective.”
The executive orders Trump signed last weekend aimed at mitigating the economic effects of the pandemic are also likely to wind up wasting lots of people’s time. The move upset negotiations at the federal level and piled up work for governors with actual responsibilities at the state level. Even the extension of unemployment benefits, which requires states to provide matching funds, will take months to set up. If, that is, courts or Congress don’t block it first.
www.washingtonpost.com/...
The committee‘s bipartisan leaders also believed Erik Prince and Sam Clovis might have provided false testimony.
In addition, the Senate Intelligence Committee was concerned that testimony from Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Hope Hicks contradicted information that Rick Gates provided to the special counsel’s office
