monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

...... And let's add the addendum that the GOP has now pretty much totally adopted Trump's style of political misinformation.

accusing others of what he himself is doing.

“At the end of the day, he still considers himself to be in the hospitality business,” Mulvaney told Wallace about Trump’s original decision to hold the next G-7 summit at his resort in Doral, Fla. — a decision he reversed late Saturday.

“I just have to pick up: You say he considers himself in the hospitality business?” Wallace asked. “He’s the president of the United States.”

Mulvaney’s interview did not play well among Trump allies and advisers, with one calling it a “self-immolation.”

To the Editor: NYT

Re “We Are All at the Mercy of the Narcissist in Chief,” by Jennifer Senior (column, Oct. 12):

As a psychiatrist who contributed a chapter to the “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” I have often been asked whether he meets the definition of a narcissist, to which I have answered, half in jest, “No, rather he gives narcissism a bad name.”

President Trump’s grandiosity and paranoid retaliatory behaviors are so far beyond those shown by what in contrast could be called “ordinary narcissists” that he requires a category beyond narcissism. The proper category would be “destructive dictator,” because Mr. Trump, like Hitler and Stalin, has the personality of a grandiose-paranoid dictator who would destroy all he saw as his enemies while endangering the nation that he supposedly was advancing through his leadership.

That puts him far beyond the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder into a much more dangerous zone for our nation.

Henry J. Friedman
Cambridge, Mass.
The writer is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Former Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich says he's now for impeaching Trump

President Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani on Friday criticized Michael Cohen's lawyer Lanny Davis for representing an indicted Ukrainian with links to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Lanny Davis represents a gentleman named Firtash," Giuliani told Hill.TV's Buck Sexton on "Rising," referring to a Ukrainian oligarch.

Dmitry Firtash signed on to be represented by Davis's law firm, Davis Goldberg & Galper, in 2016.

"He is considered to be one of the close associates of [Semion] Mogilevich, who is the head of Russian organized crime, who is Putin's best friend. Lanny Davis has represented him for four or five years. If the newspapers are correct, he gets $80,000 a month from this guy who's considered to be one of the high-level, Russian organized crime members or associates," Giuliani said.

And there it is, the other quid pro quo. Notorious Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash would help Rudy and DiGenova and Toensing cook up dirt on Joe Biden. In return, they’d work with Trump to get US corruption charges against Firtash tossed. Firtash has been fighting extradition to the US on federal corruption charges since 2014.

Our President
Josh Marshall
I know this is the first thing we learned about Trump. It’s obvious, ingrained, just basic to his whole personality. But it is still remarkable the degree to which at least half of Trump’s emotional life seems based on anger at close advisors and associates who are unable to clean up his messes to his own standards and satisfaction. Sometimes perhaps a staffer is hapless. But in virtually every case it is simply that his own actions make clean ups close to impossible. It is just a remarkable, beyond-caricature example of absent self-awareness, entitlement and yes narcissism.

I had read somewhere yesterday that Mulvaney was already on a short rope and was maybe trying just a little to hard to please.......who knows?

He's always been able to bullshit his way out of tricky situations so why should this be any different?

Trump's only miscalculation is pushing too far too fast.