"In whatever spider hole in hell they've placed bin Laden, along with all the other petty tyrants of history, all of them must now be laughing. For in the days following 9/11 we grew to despise a thug terrorist who wished to destroy what it meant to be an American.
Now, in the days after Inauguration Day, 2017, we find ourselves led by a thug president bent on finishing the job." - Chuck Plunkett, Editor of The Denver Post, Feb. 5, p. 1D
With Trump's latest outbursts, the national security state needs to do its due diligence to the nation and remove this "defcon 1" threat pronto. This is also in the wake of the fact that Russian intervention in our election remains unexplained, uninvestigated and unpunished. Which also leaves open the extent of penetration into the Trump campaign, and now the Trump administration. Indeed, we may not only have a Russian stooge occupying the highest office, but a crazy man prepared to do their bidding - given they have a compromising video on him.
It doesn't matter one damn what the cause of Trump's explosive, unstable behavior might be - even his overuse of Propecia (see last post)) - this lunatic needs to be removed from office for the good of the country. Let's even leave out his whacko pre- SuperBowl remarks to Billo O'Reilly that the U.S. is as bad as Russia in terms of killing political opponents (which Gen. Barry McCaffrey said he never thought he'd hear an American President say).
Put this in perspective! An alleged "America First" president makes brash statements before 50 million viewers that the country he allegedly governs (we've seen little evidence so far other than photo ops) is no different from so many others where political opponents can be offed in the dead of the night. No wonder Gen. McCaffrey had to fight to sustain his composure when discussing it.
Then there are his rabid attacks on an independent judiciary - namely the highly respected judge James Robart - who issued a ruling Trump didn't like. Then there have been his nutso outbursts at Malcolm Turnbull of Australia (which Sen. John McCain had to apologize for) and the other attacks on Mexico's President, apart from bringing us to the brink of war with Iran.
This is a crazy person, who as Rep. Ted Lieu noted last night (MSNBC, 'All In') , desperately needs to have a thorough mental evaluation. Quoting Rep. Lieu:
"We have a problem here in America: Our president lies pathologically, He has a staff lie pathologically. He attacks the free press, he attacks the judiciary. Donald Trump is a danger to the Republic and we need to wake up in America to the harm he is causing our country..."
Rep. Lieu went on to reference Trump's Twitter feed and how it shows lots of "mental issues" which he says people can see for themselves/ (I have, and it does! I rate this feed at 'defcon 1' in terms of possibly provoking other nations to retaliate just based on his unhinged garbage. This we cannot afford, not with Trump controlling 6,500 nuclear weapons.)
If Trump had no unilateral control over our nuclear arsenal, I personally wouldn't hit the 'Defcon 1' button and say he needs to be removed with utmost urgency. I'd say let it all play out in the courts, in congress, like with Nixon. But we don't have that luxury of time, especially now with the Doomsday Clock at two and a half minutes to midnight. As Rep. Ted Lieu went on to say:
"He has a disconnection from the truth which is highly disturbing and we can't have that person making decisions on things like nuclear weapons. ..."
To reinforce this, Rep. Lieu and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey have actually introduced a bill to curb Trump's ability to launch a nuclear strike. The congressman clarified this bill when asked by Joy Reid about it:
"We introduced this bill last year, and believe it should apply to any American President. But certainly the rants by Donald Trump do make this issue more urgent. The issue is that right now one person can destroy the whole world, the President. He can launch four thousand nuclear weapons with no checks or balances from the judiciary or the congress. We think the framers of the Constitution never would have allowed that.
That's why our bill, which has now been endorsed by the New York Times, says that the President first has to get a Declaration of War from Congress for a nuclear first strike."
First, let's grasp that in many ways this bill is unrealistic. For one thing, the Republicans will never allow passage to shackle their personal looneytune whose coattails they're riding to push their agenda. Second, an enemy first strike could come at any instant, and the time needed to get a declaration of war from congress may only ensure we have no retaliatory response.
But this is why it is essential to have a person of sound mind, a rational person, in charge of the nuclear arsenal - not some crackpot who lacks even impulse control for his tweets. This ought to be a no brainer. The question that occurs for many of us is: Why, when the CIA and NSA (under the Staff D operation) took out JFK for what they believed to be 'traitorous' actions (e.g. failing to go all out to attack Cuba in the Cuban Missile Crisis) would they allow a serious threat and unhinged Russian stooge like Trump to remain? It makes no sense, none. They removed one president from power for his sober actions and restraint, but allow an unhinged maniac with his finger on 20 times more weapons to remain? What's wrong with this picture? Well, everything!
This isn't just blowing smoke or an expression of "bitterness" as the Reeptards claim, but deep concern the nuclear codes are accessible to a likely paranoid schizophrenic with borderline personality disorder as well. Add in the lack of any impulse control - who combusts and reacts to virtually everything (as Charles Krauthammer observed in a recent WaPo piece) in the media-sphere, and you have a volatile situation. I'd say one that's thousands of times more serious than transpired with the Missile Crisis in '62.
Consider you are evaluating a candidate for a high profile job with top security clearance and access to more than 6,500 nuclear weapons (the actual number) which could reduce the planet to smoldering, radioactive ash. Would you just assume any bozo would be able to handle this responsibility, OR would you insist on a battery of psychological tests first? Obviously, a sane and rational person would demand the latter,.
In lieu of such tests, which would include the ability to restrain emotions, control impulses and especially to manage them in critical situations, one would also demand attention to detail- including reading each of the daily briefs he's given by intelligence agencies. Thus, as media commentator April Ryan put it last night ('All In') Trump's very avoidance of reading creates its own degrees of harm, alarm and incompetence. While most presidents, including JFK and Obama, typically read documents, papers for up to nine hours a day - to help make decisions, Trump reads none. Let me rephrase that: he will read a one page dilution of a PDB from Michael G. Flynn, but it must be put in more or less 'fake news' format.
An equally alarming aspect - reported in the NY Times yesterday- concerns Trump not knowing or understanding what he was doing when he signed an executive order putting Steve Bannon on the National Security Council. As the Times put it:
"he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed giving his chief strategist a seat on the National Security Council".
I mean, process this - as Gen. McCaffrey also did in sober terms. What's worse, putting this proto-Nazi on the National Security Council or not knowing that he did? What we may have is not only a Russian stooge in the White House but a semi-conscious zombot. People are putting things in front of him to sign and he doesn't have a fucking clue what he's signing! Because he doesn't read! Basically, we are all passengers in a 'vehicle' with an insane guy at the wheel, careening toward perdition.
My point here is that if he doesn't read the exec "orders" he's signing and can't read the PDBs directly but must have an aide (Flynn) reduce them to cartoon form, then he must be replaced! He is risking the nation's security as well as the world's by his manifest incompetence. Coupled with his arrogance and recklessness this is an A- bomb ready to blow.
If he also shows symptoms of paranoid ideation, imagining whole groups out to get him or undermine him, where there is no evidence, the case is even stronger. Hence, when Trump yesterday went to Ft. MacDill outside Tampa and rambled on about the media deliberately hiding "phantom terror attacks". We thus have prima facie evidence that this man belongs locked up in a psych ward at Bellevue, at the very least. He certainly doesn't belong in any place or job where he can gain unilateral access to the nuclear football, enter the codes on a whim - or belief an "enemy" is about to attack- and reduce the world to rubble. The justifications for getting him out multiply by orders of magnitude when we see he believes he is above any law, or any constraint.
If the national security state isn't convinced we've reached the 'Defcon 1' alarm yet with this nut, then what is the alternative for removal? The only solution for now, short of a violent intel agency intervention, would appear to be the 25th amendment - assuming enough Republicans can find their spines (which some have, after the O'Reilly interview). As Richard Cohen put it:
He thinks he is infallible, a kind of secular pope. Things will go from bad to worse... One remote remedy is impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate...There is, however, another way. Under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, the vice president, together with a “majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide” can remove the president for being “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
It is clear to most sober and sentient citizens that Trump is way past the stage of being able to discharge the duties of the office. We simply cannot afford to have a paranoid sociopath (likely controlled by a foreign power) with the impulse control of a dyspeptic 4 year old in charge of our nuclear arsenal - and who may launch all those weapons because the Chinese, Iranians, or North Koreans might suddenly piss him off.
See also:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/todd-gitlin/71065/government-by-outburst
