Trump Needs a Shrink and a Baby-Sitter, Not a National Security Adviser
Thanks to NYT’s sane washing, most people didn’t notice how nutso Trump was about Greenland until he sent his batshit note to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre the other day.
Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT
But Trump said more about his own fragile psyche in the interview that NYT sane washed. Donald Trump didn’t just describe his aspiration to own Greenland as necessary for his own personal psychology.
David E. Sanger
Why is ownership important here?
President Trump
Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document, that you can have a base.
David E. Sanger
So you’re going to ask them to buy it?
Katie Rogers
Psychologically important to you or to the United States?
President Trump
Psychologically important for me. Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything. [my emphasis]
He also described — while explaining why he no longer had a good relationship with Zohran Mamdani — his Venezuelan invasion as a psychological success.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Do you still have a good relationship with Mamdani?
President Trump
Well, I did, but [Mamdani] hit me sooner than I thought. I thought it would take him at least a month. I mean, he hit me on Venezuela.
Tyler Pager
What did he — what did you say to him?
President Trump
He didn’t. We didn’t talk about it. Oh, yeah, we did. He called and said: “I just want to let you know. I’m going to come out against —”
Zolan Kanno-Youngs
He called you beforehand?
President Trump
Uh, he called me after it was done, after this incredible military, financial and psychological success. He called me to say that, respectfully, I disagree with what you did. And I said, “Give me a reason why.” And I didn’t feel he had a reason, but he disagreed nevertheless. I would say it was politics more than anything else. Although I think it’s bad politics.
I think it’s been one of the very successful — it’s been one of the greatest military success — nobody’s ever seen anything like it. We attacked a fort with thousands of people and soldiers in that fort. You know, that was built there. It was built as a safe house with sealed doors and everything else. [Mr. Trump makes a sound like an explosion.] It was like they were paper. [my emphasis]
And he viewed it as a psychological success against the background of Jimmy Carter’s failed attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages, Operation Eagle Claw, a failure that became the impetus for modernizing US Special Forces.
Trump explicitly raised the Carter failure in response to Katie Rogers’ question about what he was thinking as he watched the operation.
David E. Sanger
Did you watch either by video —
President Trump
I did. I was, I saw it.
David E. Sanger
What — what did that feel like? You were down at Mar-a-Lago?
President Trump
It’s like watching a movie, except you’re — it’s a little bit, you know — look, you don’t know if —
Katie Rogers
Are you worried when this is happening, while you’re watching? Or what is going through your mind?
President Trump
Yeah, I’m worried that it ends up being Jimmy Carter disaster that destroyed his entire administration.
And then — after an extensive discussion with Sanger about whether the Eagle Claw failure caused Carter’s election loss that year (neither mentioned Ronald Reagan’s interventions with Iran) — Trump returned to Eagle Claw in response to a Sanger attempt to understand Trump’s “Remote Control” occupation of Venezuela. This came in a passage where Sanger, suffering from normalcy bias, attempted to probe how Trump planned to impose order on Venezuela (Trump had earlier responded to a Tyler Pager question, in one of the very few pieces of real news in the interview, that he would be running Venezuela “much longer” than a year).
Trump didn’t want to talk about occupation; he wanted to talk about which of his quick strikes was the most important.
David E. Sanger
Each one of those, sir, was a one-off, you know, attack, where you could attack and then retreat. You are now in the middle of an occupation —
President Trump
But let me ask you a question: Of the four things that we talked about —
David E. Sanger
A remote control.
President Trump
— and I did other stuff — which is the most important? Al-Baghdadi, Suleimani, this one or the Iran nuclear attack?
David E. Sanger
I think people would probably disagree on that, but I think a lot of people would argue that anything that set back Iran from getting a nuclear weapon may have been the most important.
President Trump
I would say. And yet this seems to get more — more interest in this one than the other three.
Sanger attempted to return to the question of occupation, but Trump didn’t realize at first that Sanger is talking about the occupation, not just the quick strike.
David E. Sanger
But this has got more complication for you —
President Trump
Very complicated.
David E. Sanger
Because you’re going to have years —
President Trump
Oh, I see, you mean future complication.
David E. Sanger
— future — you’re going to have years in which you’re going to have to —
Tyler Pager
You said it’s going to be more than a year.
David E. Sanger
Yeah, you’re going to have to decide: Am I sending in troops?
[Mr. Trump speaks briefly off the record.]
Tyler Pager
Mr. President, on the record, just the —
[There is cross-talk.]
Whatever got said off the record, it distracted from Sanger’s focus on the occupation, and Pager returned to issues better understood as Trump’s psyche: his confidence, his boasts (repeated elsewhere in the interview, including to explain the huge budget deficits he caused with tax cuts) that he single-handedly rebuilt the military in his first term.
Tyler Pager
On the success of the Maduro operation. Does it mean — give you confidence? Or does it mean you’re going to pursue future military action against Mexico or Colombia or other countries in the Caribbean?
President Trump
No, but it — I didn’t need confidence. I have a lot of confidence in my people, in my military. I built the military. Remember this: Our military, when I took over in my first term, was a mess. I rebuilt the entire military, and now I’m doing it even more so. So, our military’s great. And more importantly, we’re the best soldiers.
Sanger persisted, imagining that Trump, who has never studied a day in his life, studied other occupations before deciding to do his Venezuela occupation on the cheap.
David E. Sanger
Did you study some other occupations? Japan, Iraq, others?
President Trump
Yes, yes. I studied, I studied —
David E. Sanger
And what — what lesson did you draw from that, that we should know —
President Trump
That it’s highly risky.
David E. Sanger
— for Venezuela?
President Trump
That’s what I do.
David E. Sanger
OK, so —
President Trump
I looked at — I looked at some of the attacks. I studied the Carter attack. It was a disaster. I would have never done it that way.
It took Sanger some time before he figured out Trump can’t even conceive of the occupation. Trump was still talking about the quick strike attack and contemplating how it could have ended like it did for Jimmy Carter, in ignominy.
David E. Sanger
You were talking about the attack. I was asking about the occupations that followed —
President Trump
You know, they had — they had a — they had a sandstorm. Did you know that? And they decided to go forward. We would go back, and let’s hit it three days later. They wanted to go forward, and they said, keep going. Helicopters don’t work well in the sand.
Karoline Leavitt
Sir, do you want to show them the renovations?
And that’s when Karoline Leavitt, who had been trying to end the entire interview, instead distracted Trump, like one would a toddler, with a topic she knows he loves, his renovations.
Here’s your binky, Donald.
NYT did a grave disservice by sane washing this interview; indeed, Trump betrayed his fundamental vulnerability elsewhere in the interview.
Because what it shows is that Trump is literally like a toddler knocking over the Monopoly board because he’s frustrated with the rules. No matter how Sanger attempts to normalize it, Trump’s foreign policy is not (as Sanger fancies) a normal second term investment in legacy.
Rather, Donald Trump is invading sovereign foreign countries, without even the ability to consider the years-long aftermath, out of a psychological need.
I cannot wait and yet am loathe to hear the inevitably demented spectacle Trump makes of himeself tomorrow at Davos.
If it was anything like the presser today, ye gods. SNL will have clips to run for a decade.
The psychological games people…erm, Trump plays…
Meanwhile…
Leading French economist Gabriel Zucman is urging European governments to inflict financial pain on American billionaires in response to US President Donald Trump’s effort to seize control of Greenland, a mineral-rich island that some of Trump’s rich campaign donors see as a potentially massive profit opportunity.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/gabriel-zucman-trump-tariffs
======
I love this idea.
OK by me, but why not attack the sick psyche at home?
Although Kerry Kennedy’s promise to chisel trump’s name off the Kennedy center has not affected him, SFAIK, there are things the Democrats could do.
No. 1: Sense of the party resolution that any territory added to the US by trump will be returned immediately upon Democratic control of Congress, along with a promise to cancel any private firm contracts made in aid of trump’s imperialism.
That second part also hits trump where it hurts because it would mean that his intentions toward investments in Venezuelan oil would evaporate.
Attacking Trump directly does not work. His cult and sycophants circle the wagons around him, protect him and defend him. Attacking those around him seems to be the only way to effect change with Trump.
That’s Zucman’s argument, that the billionaires will back off their pressure on Trump over Greenland. Makes sense to me, too.
Speaking of American billionaires, according to this 1/18/26 article by Emma Burleigh in Fortune, there are about 67 of them in Palm Beach. Here are the top 10.
* Thomas Peterffy, $87.6 billion
* Julia Koch and family, $79.8 billion
* Stephen Schwarzman, $55.6 billion
* Kenneth Griffin, $48.3 billion
* Abigail Johnson, $46.6 billion
* Thomas Frist Jr., $40.9 billion
* Dan Gilbert, $40.8 billion
* Gina Rinehart, $39.1 billion
* David Tepper, $23.4 billion
* Henry Kravis, $19.3 billion
https://fortune.com/article/billionaires-beach-florida-donald-trump-ken-griffin-richest-palm-beach-residents/
And I bet each one of them fingers that list every morning and ponders, with clenched and shaking hands, how they can move past the one above them.
They need to beware of violating treaties – they’re living in East Florida. Which we got from Spain by a treaty.
Cory Doctorow has some ideas which could free up the Internet and end what he calls the war on general purpose computing through the window Trmp has opened. Here’s his speech to Hamburg’s Chaos Communications Congress on “The Post-American Internet”:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/
I believe this would be a long haul over rough ground but Cory’s a very smart guy and his proposal might have real merit.
“Here’s your binky, Donald” could have been the lede.
Expectant mom Karoline Leavitt is learning a LOT about dealing with strong-willed children.
Made me laugh too when I read that!
Yes, LOL! …reminded me immediately of that
baby-Trump-in-a-diaper balloon we used to see at protests.
LEAVITT: Sir,
do you want to show them the renovations?here’s your binky.I can’t understand why Trump want’s a ballroom in the first place. And of course, Donny the boss, dances the waltz! Can’t see it.
I only sort of wants a ballroom. What he really wants is the upgraded strengthening of the bunker underneath the East Wing/Ballroom. He is preparing for where to hide when the memory care people come to get him.
With Karoline Leavitt working so close to The AntiChrist while she is with child, I am reminded of the movie, Rosemary’s Baby, and the horror of knowing she may be carrying Satan’s spawn!
Ugh. I suspect somebody planted the idea that Trump has a psychological need to possess real estate and other benchmarks. It may have been unwitting, but it caught on with Trump because it encapsulates his drive to make deals and seize cultural recognition (ex. taking control of Kennedy Center and putting his name on it). He lacks awareness as to what having a psychological need means, but it has likely been repeated before him and it’s stuck.
I’d bet this phrase was in an assessment describing his mental state and behaviors, perhaps even an intelligence assessment, and it stuck with him. Just as he hasn’t grasped what disclosing details of past cognitive tests tell us — person, man, woman, camera, tv stayed with him but the full context and impact didn’t — a particular phrase is now embedded in his thinking but the reason why the phrase was ever used eludes him.
Yeah, I’ve always suspected that Dr Ronnie Jackson, who apparently gave Trump that test handed him an easy break, supposing Trump remembered it correctly. The test is supposed to use five unrelated items but out of “person, man, woman, camera, tv,” the first three items are essentially the same (people) and the last two are clearly related, or would be in the mind of an ex-reality TV star. Thank you Doctor Ronnie.
We have never gotten an accurate assessment of Trump’s health, mental or physical, from a truthful doctor.
I for one would like to know what drugs he’s taking, especially those intended to simulate alertness and vitality.
It’s an amusing coincidence that I heard an advertisement today for a drug to treat tardive dyskinesia — and the ad mentioned some drugs for mental illness may cause TD.
Huh.
It seemed fairly obvious at the time that Kras was rattling off the five objects directly in front of him with “person, man, woman, camera, tv.”
With regards to Greenland, there are multiple parties planting the idea of taking over the island: Vance and the techbros, Ronald Lauder, Putin, and god only knows who else, each for their own benefit. Perhaps all of them have been whispering in his ear, reinforcing his “psychological” needs.
The man-baby always wants his needs fulfilled.
And when they “whisper in his ear” the men and women (not to mention, parenthetically, the equipment and logistics) of the armed forces count for nothing.
Anyone who has lived in NYC and worked in real estate or financial circles has heard Trump stories.
One story relevant story was told to me by the Managing Partner of an investment bank.
In the late 1980s, Trump bought The Plaza Hotel and had an office there.
Around 1988-9, an out-of-town R/E investment group bought the building across the street from the Plaza on Fifth Ave. (I think it was 745 Fifth Ave). The R/E group had plans for substantial renovations and so they filed the appropriate paperwork with the city.
Trump summoned the R/E group owners to his office–high up in The Plaza–pointed out his high window at the building across the street, and said something to the effect of, “Nice purchase. But that is my corner. I can see it from here so it is my corner. Give me 10% of the deal.”
Well the R/E group owners told him tersely to buzz off and left. Trump spent the next few years lobbying city hall to deny the permitting. In the end, the permitting delays ensured that the owners made little or no money off the purchase.
So in addition to his innate drive for retribution, Trump has been Yertle the Turtle for a very very long time: he thinks he is king of all he can see.
And from his current perch, he can see a lot now including Greenland and Canada.
Delay, delay, delay….to get what he wants. There’s a pattern here, and it works.
What I cannot understand is why anyone continued to bid his jobs.
I knew the heir of the company that lit Broadway, and he told me that his elders had made the signs for Trump Tower and never got paid.
I think Rayne is right, and it fits well with her earlier post on possible dementia. His vocabulary has shrunk noticeable over the last decade, and his self-control is dwindling, hence the need for the binky.
The billionaire media ignores his deepening lunacy, whether because of normalcy bias or self-protection. I’m inclined to the latter, because when Biden exhibited a form of mental decline, the NYT stomped on him.
Everyone at NYT should remember that we all grow old and start dropping bits of memory, or have slower recall because so much memory is in use. They haven’t been treating The Felon Guy like they have Dem presidents.
I still think that the 25th Amendment solution will be the actual one, noting that JD Vance will want to sidestep the fallout from the decisions being made. The questions needing answers are when JD pulls the trigger, and how will he neuter Miller who will not give up his de facto power gracefully. IMHO, it will happen after Convict-1 cancels elections using the Insurrection Act, or if Greenland is invaded, when the body bags start coming home.
At that inflection point (I’m sure there are other equally valid ones) Vance takes over with clean(er) hands. He will not be an improvement in terms of policy, and any hopes that Usha will rein JD in are misplaced, because I think she’ll be discarded if she tries. Vance is allegedly smarter than Convict-1 but he’s also got bad actors like Thiel holding his IOUs but few friends and fewer people who actually trust him.
If Vance pulls the 25A trigger, I think it’s likely to be a year from tomorrow or shortly thereafter. The damage that Trump has done to the Republican brand will be from the midterms, so it’s more likely that Republicans in Congress will back him. The reason for the specific date is that is halfway through Trump’s term, so Vance could delude himself into thinking that he could serve two more full terms.
Less likely IMHO is that he pulls the trigger in the near future, having decided that the brand is getting so badly damaged that he’s not going to get re-elected and 2.5 years as president is better than none.
If Vance ascends to the big chair, Miller isn’t a problem. He’s an at-will employee who can be fired at a moment’s notice by the President. Miller only holds power now because Trump thinks he has a symbiotic relationship with him. Vance will recognize that as parasitism and ditch Miller quickly.
My conspiratorial thought is that JD and his backers/puppeteers have known for some time (years) that DJT has been losing it, and have always planned to have JD invoke the 25th Amendment and step into the Presidency. The original plan, I suspect, was to wait until at least noon on January 20, 2027, more than halfway through the term, so that JD would be eligible for election in 2028 and re-election in 2032 without needing to change or ignore the Constitution.
But things may be happening a little too fast.
That has been my exact thought since JD Vance was picked as VP. Tech and finance bros weren’t sold on Trump round 2, but there were assurances that he would only be in for a few years and be focused on things that didn’t matter (like the renovations, which reek of Versailles-style oligarchic distraction). Then along came a spider (Miller), and now the “new money elites” are trying to figure out how to handle the damage from tariffs, Greenland, Venezuela, and ICE goons. It would be a great sense of schadenfreude if it wasn’t also screwing us all over.
It’s all positively Shakespearean.
I have long thought that the Trump era is full of opportunities for one or more brilliant tragic comedy writers to emerge with some really great work from all of the high stakes, serious nonsense.
The action swings from King Lear to The History of the World. The characters satirize themselves!
JD Vance will *never* trigger the 25th Amendment. The bar to sustain a removal by the 25th is much higher than impeachment. (The 25th ultimately requires the concurrence of 2/3 of the Senate *and* 2/3 of the House). It’s impossible to imagine convincing that many batshit crazy Republicans to support the effort, and the consequences for failing to sustain Trump’s removal would be catastrophic for JD and anyone who supported him. If anti-Trump sentiment starts to build, he’ll be be impeached well before enough support exists to trigger the 25th.
It also requires half of all Cabinet members. Can you imagine RFK, Jr. giving up his sinecure/satrapy? Linda McMahon? Kegsbreath? Bondi? Rubio? Bessent? Duffy? Noem? There’s a reason why lickspittles were chosen.
Yet another example of the institutional failure of Congress – there’s an alternative means of invoking the 25th, which involves the VP and a Congressionally-designated body, but Congress has never passed a law to formally designate a group to fulfill this requirement, and there’s not a chance in hell of getting that done now.
An appointed body wouldn’t make any real difference. The body gets around the issue of getting half the cabinet to agree, but the effort still fails if you can’t convince 2/3 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate.
Just as he hasn’t grasped what disclosing details of past cognitive tests tell us — person, man, woman, camera, tv stayed with him but the full context and impact didn’t — a particular phrase is now embedded in his thinking but the reason why the phrase was ever used eludes him.
My head snapped up when Trump first told us how he mastered his intelligence test by successfully repeating those words. The medical staff used that same test on my son following his stroke. I wanted to scream – It’s testing basic cognitive function, not intelligence. How did that not raise concern? How was there not push back? How could that be normalized?
“How did that not raise concern? How was there not push back? How could that be normalized?”
Sanewashing, sanewashing, and sanewashing.
See my comment above. The five items are supposed to be unrelated (makes remembering them harder), but Dr Ronnie’s five are strongly inter-related (makes remembering them much easier).
Maybe I’m the one not remembering it correctly, but I thought the whole man, woman, person, camera, tv thing came about because Trump was trying to give an example of the difficult questions on his “intelligence” test. And so he literally named 5 things he could see in front of him during an interview to use as his 5 words to repeat example. Not that those were the actual words on the test they gave him. At one point, Trump hesitates as he repeats the words he just picked as though he needs a moment to remember what the last 2 words were. Which in hindsight, might be more significant than we realized.
Yes, exactly this.
“In the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), the serial subtraction task specifically requires the participant to count backward from 100 by 7s”
Think Trump can do that?
I see former VP Al Gore called Trump insane today. Good. It’s time elder statesmen used blunt language in public forums to describe Trump’s behavior.
source: US Has ‘No Choice’ Over Cheap Solar and Wind, Al Gore Tells Davos
The former US vice president and others weigh in on the energy transition at Davos.
By Laura Millan and Frances Schwartzkopff, Bloomberg
January 20, 2026 at 8:26 AM EST
Obama and Biden both need to say something. Both of those two in particular commenting on Trump, in tandem, would drive Trump even more crazy. It may even push him over the edge. :p
Amen. Well, I don’t give a hoot about Gore, but Obama needs to reflect on J.Q. Adams’s career in the House where he became the moral-political voice of antislavery.
Being an ex-presiden t now is not what it was in the 1830s, but the changes are all in Obama’s favor.
I’ve got Hubert Humphrey on speed-dial.
A lot of observers could see quite some time ago that Trump’s needs are peculiar to his aberrant psychology and not related to the real world.
Yet Donald Trump is a useful idiot for a lot of people, including and especially Vladimir Putin.
“Trump is literally like a toddler knocking over the Monopoly board…”
Which pretty much describes his behavior in tanking three casinos in Atlantic City (1990 -92), plus Trump Resorts & Casino (2008), & Trump Entertainment Resorts (2008). Who in history has *ever* been unable to turn institutional gambling into a winning proposition?? In each case, he was able to take away some crazy cash to stash in his garter as he knocked over the board, grabbed all the loose tokens and made for the door.
But the properties all went bust . Not to mention The Plaza, also in 1992.
“Atlantic City fueled a lot of growth for me,” he said in 2016. “The money I took out of there was incredible.”
Of course he has “a psychological need” to grab other people’s property — because he’s never been able to hold on to his own without grifting.
Honest to Dog, it’s like there’s no institutional memory at the Times which predates Keller beating the drum for Iraq in 2003.
While I agree with your broader point, my understanding is that Atlantic City casinos were going through a rough patch at the time as newly-opened tribal casinos in Pennsylvania peeled off a fair chunk of their business. Of course, a businessman as smart as Trump pretends to be would have weathered that storm.
Even ignoring the backroom deals and money laundering, NJ casinos were a license to print money. But it required enough acumen to manage your way out of a wet paper bag. Trump lacks that. He overspent like a drunken sailor in port on things that would never return a dime.
And his airline, one of many articles on his insanity and no desire to listen to anybody that knows anything, https://simpleflying.com/donald-trumps-failed-airline/
He’s all about looks, and doesn’t care about the structure that supports everything he sees.
(He’d have done better as an interior decorator for people with no taste.)
and he has held a grudge against native Americans ever since, too
Greenland: Why do we want to be an island territory of the U.S.? Look at how Trump treats Puerto Rico.
If I had Danish government/workplace benefits, I sure wouldn’t be eager to give them up for American benefits.
If some guy at the end of the bar was ranting and raving about invading Greenland because of his psychological needs, everyone would assume he’s a bit off his rocker and try to put a little space between them and him. NYT interviews DJT and hears this, they try to extract some underlying policy ethos instead of immediately pivoting to try to learn about the mental health of the person who always has the nuclear football within reach.
Every credible commentator, leader, politician, executive, journalist, etc., should preface all other statements by saying “he is senile, unfit, and dangerous.”
^^^This
Every statement, every article, every time.
It would be cruel but great if a lot of people started calling him Fred Jr.
Notice that the phrase “psychological need” turned into “psychological success” later in the conversation. He may as well truncate the adjective, like he often does (and comedians who parody his vocal style mimic this tic), and just say “because psychology”. I’m smart – I can use the word “psychology” in a 3-word “sentence”.
OMFG. Instead of building the gilded ballroom, they should just get honest and build the gilded White House Memory Care Building and fill it with binkies. And take away the keys to all his golf carts.
No! Let him keep the keys to any golf cart he wants. Take the nuclear football away instead. He can still “watch movies” in the situation room, he just can’t issue orders determinative of their plots.
I don’t worry about what Trump might do on a golf course. Anyone who plays with him is asking for it. It’s absolutely everything else that terrifies me.
You’re right – let him keep those keys AND bring all his golf carts into the gigantic ballroom/memory care building where his child/grownup sycophant friends can each get into one and play bumper-car demolition derby with Master Trump. After-party to be held in the ketchup-throwing room/bunker in the basement. Then summer camp in Greenland later in the year.
I’m reminded of the amusement park Michael Jackson built on his property so he could have fun with the kids. I’m also reminded that Pablo Escobar kept hippos on his property. The biggest binkies that the world has never seen the likes of before.
Trump thinks of himself as Nero and the US as the Rome of Nero’s time in so many different ways. Someone should write a book and compare the eerie parallels in the manipulation/change of Roman governance from Julius Caesar through Nero and the manipulation/change of American governance from Bush the lesser to Trump. One could devote a chapter to the parallels of Trump the self-deluded TV personality to Nero the self-proclaimed reality star of his deranged time and mind. Trump’s gilded ballroom is just his version of Nero’s Domus Aurea or perhaps more appropriately The Octagonal Room in the Esquiline Wing where the emperor portrayed his divinity.
Your reference to Nero reminds me of a tweet from Trump’s tweet writer during his first term, Dan Scavino. It was put on the web on Jan. 18, 2020, the beginning of that election year: Trump leaving a “city” named “Deep State” which is only a big wall of fire and smoke. My instant association was Nero, and I was rather horrified, so I saved a copy, including the link — which is, to my surprise, still working. I hesitate to provide the link because it’s not available on the Wayback Machine, but maybe someone else here has recollections, too.
The damage done will be his legacy.
Yep, he’ll forever use another superstar’s song without getting their permission,
but he’s Canadian so I guess it is a tariff.
Apropos of the monopoly board and binky references, check out Morten Morland’s cartoon:
https://bsky.app/profile/mortenmorland.bsky.social/post/3mcsfwrvumk2j
Part of the problem is that journalist standards assume that politicians are normal boring people who will say a few juicy lines in boring prepped responses. So journalists just take the juicy lines and paraphrase the rest. But with Trump, he rambles insane nonsense which make the juicy lines far worse in context but you can only see them in long form videos, not in newspapers or clips on TV where talkers repeat the juicy lines to craft their own narratives.
I was recently trying to quote the full response to the Hannity Dictator on Day One line and his full passage on the line that he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and his people would still be loyal. It was easy to find the famous lines but hard to see the sentences before and after it.
With the Dictator line I eventually turned to YouTube and wrote the transcript myself because news sites left off the important parts. I think that was a prepped response because the defense afterwards was that he’d stop being a dictator after day one and only meant it for immigration and oil; as if presidents can choose to be dictators. But the question was asking if he’d try to get retribution on his enemies and he never answered it and instead starts talking about being a dictator on unrelated issues. He couldn’t even lie about not wanting to abuse his power for revenge.
And the 5th avenue line was incredibly condescending, referring to them as “my people” twice and mocking their loyalty before he had even won the Republican nomination. I wanted the full quote to burn Trumpers who are defending ICE’s attacks on us. I got lots of thumbs down but very few replies because it worked. If you just show these people one phrase they will invent their own context. You have to show them full quotes and the media won’t do it.
Trump has Putin envy. Putin wants to take over Ukraine so future Russians will see him as like Peter the Great (so he thinks). Trump figures taking over Greenland will make him more like Putin.
More likely, at least to me, is that Russia collapses, and freakin’ Trump takes credit for it! Trump, conqueror of the awful Bolsheviks, ruler of America forever, if he lives that long.
One pervasive form of sanewashing is to treat Trump’s thinking as though it emerges from an adult brain – a sociopathic and senescing one, but an adult one nevertheless. The diagnosis that fits the evidence is that Trump’s development was arrested at the age of about three (fair to suppose Fred didn’t keep Dr. Spock on the bedside table). He knows about the external world, and that his desires are to be expressed in relation to that world. But it isn’t a world of independent beings exercising agency toward their individual and collective goals; it’s a world of objects to be seized or paraded before him in his drive to form a sense of self that, unbeknownst to his psyche, was thwarted for good some 75 years ago.
Even serious commentators assess his actions (without explicitly recognizing they are doing so) as resting on (albeit-deformed) adult notions of, e.g., acting in service of a theory of collective well-being (MAGA!) in a geopolitical context. I’m certain that the autocrats, the broligarchs and all the others (Miller, Vought, &c.) who manipulate him so easily to their ends have no such illusions.
As per Thomas Edsall, “Trump Unmasked” in NYT, Donald Trump is quite literally addicted to power. Understanding that his actions and those of his enablers are predicated on his addiction is useful for framing an intervention. We are in effect family members of a tyrannical bullying addict in the grip of an all-consuming need. Understand the pressure: satisfaction is fleeting; it is merely prelude to more need. Need is the driver. Trump’s minions are ransacking the planet for opportunities to acquire power that they can offer up to the gaping maw of his insatiable appetite. That is why this administration is so erratic and random in the swath it is cutting through our lives. Trump has no plan, just a grinding, growing, inexhaustible need.
The administration’s behavior makes exactly the same amount of sense as that of a far-gone heroin addict. While the minions have their own agendas and have correctly deduced that by feeding the monkey on Trump’s back they can borrow power and protection to pursue them – and the fallout is real – the salient fact is that they are all dependent on maintaining an untreated addict in the White House who wields the accumulated power of the richest and most powerful nation in history. The wet work of servicing Trump’s concupiscence for personal dominance and power has been valorized in spectacles of performative extortion and retribution. We are treated as though we too exist to facilitate the President’s addiction. This is debilitating illness that wards off interference by presenting as an existential threat to anyone who thwarts him. The “family” must face up to it and deal with it as such. That is never easy and the way is rarely clear, but families in America have had to do a lot of this kind of thing recently. We can do what we must.
Edsall’s piece was good.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/opinion/trump-presidential-power-addiction.html
Yes. Remarkably substantial for our typically sane-washing NYT.
Yes, it was good.
Trump Unmasked President Trump is showing
symptoms of an addiction to power
Thomas B. Edsall Jan. 13, 2026
Justin Hendrix offers a GIFT Link here:
https://bsky.app/profile/justinhendrix.bsky.social/post/3mcf323zsfc2f
7:28 AM · Jan 14, 2026
This post and Rayne’s post on dementia are perfectly timed.
I was just listening to CNN radio, and they were airing Trump speaking unedited and incoherently.
For thirty minutes I heard him babble from one of his topics to the next, and back again.
It was like listening to a three year old describing to us how everything works.
And this angry man has the nuclear codes. It was terrifying.
So Trump is more coherent, has a bigger vocabulary, and some kind of consistent (if tragically wrong-headed) ideas when he writes those middle-of-the-night uh, emissions, from his phone.
I doubt Trump is the one actually crafting those missives.
I’m certain that he has a reading disability, so not only does he read at an elementary level, he cannot spell. Yes, someone else is helping with the night time shit posting, and it isn’t only spell check..
Remember, he did not even recognize ‘Yosemite’, which is the exact mistake I made in the second grade.
They sound dictated and cleaned up. I just had a thought! What’s the time difference at Davos. About 5-6 hours. Hmmm.
If it’s coherent, correctly spelled, and correctly punctuated, someone either cleaned it up completely or wrote and posted it for him.
i continue to wonder what time is it in Moscow (!) when these smartberries of trumpian wisdom emerge on his social media.
I frequently check the time across time zones especially when I see certain kinds of internet traffic.
Left: ET Right: Moscow time
Tue 9:00 pm Wed 5:00 am
Tue 10:00 pm Wed 6:00 am
Tue 11:00 pm Wed 7:00 am
Wed 12:00 midnight Wed 8:00 am
Wed 1:00 am Wed 9:00 am
Wed 2:00 am Wed 10:00 am
Wed 3:00 am Wed 11:00 am
So easy to mess with a sundowning person in Eastern time zone.
lol! Trump is on East Coast time, UTC-5 and Moscow is UTC+8.
[Things change, though, depending on if daylight savings time is in effect.]
harpie, it appears that Moscow is at UTC+3. It’s 8 hours later than ET, and 11 hours later than Pacific time (UTC-8).
Omg!… Yes, PJ…ack! [I should NEVER forget to add my usual disclaimer to “Please check my math”……SO embarrassing]
YOU ARE SO WRONG ABOUT TRUMP!!!
I doubt a psychiatrist would do him any good. Analysis would only confuse him.
At this point, he needs a good neurologist. Might be able to extend his life a bit, if he takes their advice.
Baby-sitter? An attendant who is certified to use restraints is more like it.
Who gives a crap about what would do him any good.
It’s the people of the country that need to figure out what’s good for them.
#te
No need to sanewash—Trump is crazy, senile, AND a toddler.
As JFK said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
Or, in Trump’s lexicon: Ask not what your country can do to you, (not a goddam thing if you’ve got some money,) ask what you can do to your country.
MAGAts: “Laws, the Constititution, are just g-d pieces of paper.
Trump needs to be put in a Skinner Box.
Im sure he will take credit for stopping the war between Greenland and the US
That one he actually could stop before he starts it.
He would almost be up to one war solved.
He admitted nobody can stop him and he can do whatever he wants. Many times he has said “I’m allowed to do x.” So in his twisted mind by not starting a war he is showing mercy and restraint and deserves a peace prize.
Trump reminds me of a serial killer. I just watched something about the serial killer Dennis Rader aka BTK. He told police that “there are a lot of lucky people” that he wanted to kill but did not.
His only limit is his own “morality.”
That is a miniscule amount, at best.
He is now treating the world as he did his female victims.
As if he was a star, and as if that was ok for a star to do.
His “morality” is nonexistent. His mortality is catching up to him, though.
I think the tell in Trump’s statement(s) is the phrase “ownership gives you things.” There are reports that the oligarchs want Greenland as a regulatory free-zone, sort of an ersatz dystopian version of the imaginary law free sultanate in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, but with the added protection of US military protection.
https://newrepublic.com/article/205102/oligarchs-pushing-conquest-greenland-trump
It is important to recognize what a vast US territory free of all (or virtually) all federal and state law and regulation would be worth to these individuals. The freedom to develop AI without regulatory oversight, free trade, no taxes, etc. Musk could build his army of robots. This Congress would likely be very willing to provide whatever they wanted.
]
It would be the greatest foreign policy debacle in US history, but the oligarchs won’t care and Trump, who knows what he comprehends.
I think the techbros underestimate the work and funding they’d have to put in. That mile-deep ice sheet is not going to help them.
Sounds just like a deep-freeze rework in prospect of Leopold II’s late unlamented Belgian Congo…
Why doesn’t any or all of the European Leaders call Trump out? “Trump was convicted in the state of New York for fraud and is a felon. Now the convicted felon wants to steal Greenland. As Leaders, we cannot let this criminal acitivity stand.”
Fight fire with fire. Treat Trump how he treats others. I’m willing to bet that Trump would be so humiliated given that the world would carry this message in their media, that he would shrink from this aggression.
Doubt if Trump can be humiliated. What ever negative things are said about him, he’ll just call those people “nasty”. Instead of feeling humiliated he would attack. He would try to ruin the person or corporation. As some have suggested, if his billionaire buddies have their fortunes negatively impacted they’ll drop Trump in a heart beat. Those people don’t have friends they have assets and if you’re not an asset, you’re gone.
At the rate things are going in the U.S.A. we may not have to worry about an invasion of Greenland, the military may be too busy putting down a civil war or some such thing.
Trump reminds me of a person who just keeps going until he is stopped by a greater force. As a friend of mine says, “the man is mad, quite mad”, they still have a slight British accent. Me, Trump is just bat shit crazy. All those Republicans in Congress who support Trump could wind up wearing all of this if he does something so crazy the country may not recover for decades.
Great points.
re:
How many times do we need to be shown the evidence, that every time there is a R-administration, they wreck the economy and a Dem has to fix it, before we get it through our collective thick heads? It is said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, is the definition of insanity.
Economists are sounding the emergency alarm of impending financial doom due to the markers they are seeing in the economy. And the SCOTUS is hearing a case of whether the Executive branch can have an impact on Fed policy decision making.
The Brits have a way of seeing madness. From the Bridge on the River Kwai:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAoBW3yjlvA
reply to e. a. foster:
His attacks derive from a *constant* internal state of profound and at this point in his life ineradicable humiliation. There is a black hole at the center of his personality. Every tiny slight evokes this deep internal sense of worthlessness, and the only way he ever learned to respond was by attacking, dominating, and destroying.
For the past week, I’ve been watching for indicators of planning of operations against Greenland. Things such as requests for detailed maps and imagery, analysis of ports and transportation nodes and, especially, targeting information. Such things might be routine updates if about adversaries. Today, for the first time, I saw evidence of analysis of considerations for military “access, basing, and overflight” (ABO) if Greenland isn’t “available”.
IMHO, the pace, vehemence, and detachment from reality in the orange shit stain’s posts and actions is an indicator that he is in some kind of rolling emotional / mental crisis. I do believe that he will order our military (possibly via JSOC) to take some action very soon. I’m pretty sure that normal military would balk at this, but JSOC has been rotting away since they forgot the “rules of war” in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Oh, don’t you think it’s unfair to call it a “crisis”. That implies that changing something (information, a change in perspective, good advice) could resolve it. The poor man can’t help it if wishes to die in front of us, and take, as much of the US with him as he can. He’s very sick. Physically and brain-wise.
This has “Are you an Old Testament or a New Testament guy?” vibes, lol.
Trump sussing out what people want to hear as he responds.
Air Force 1 had to turn around and return to the U.S. due to “minor electrical problem”. Not sure what to make of that.
“Air Force 1 had to turn around and return to the U.S. due to “minor electrical problem”.”
I had a feeling Trump wasn’t gonna show, and display his illness before the world. He very well might be in such a state that he can’t get down the ramp unassisted.
Oh shoot! I was wrong. The plane returned, and Trump took the back-up plane.
On other news, Lindsey Halligan has been told to step down or face consequences by Judge David J. Novak and has resigned. As predicted on Emptywheel the judge wasn’t impressed by the motion filed by Blanche, Bondi & Halligan : “contains a level of vitriol more appropriate for a cable news talk show and falls far beneath the level of advocacy expected from litigants in this court, particularly the Department of Justice”. By a Trump appointee no less.
This got heavy play on MSNOW. I refuse to watch any network that employs Scott Jennings, even if Kaitlan Collins is stuck there for now.
I’ve heard that when Karoline finally goes on maternity leave as her pregnancy advances, that Scottie is pegged to be the next press secretary – yikes…
Oh dear God. I can’t decide if that represents going from worse to worser or vice worse-a.
At least he won’t be on CNN anymore…?
Donald Trump makes President Merkin Muffley seem like the most intelligent and competent president ever.