How stupid is Trump?

Dr. Deborah Birx said the moment when Donald Trump suggested shining light on a person’s body and injecting people with disinfectant to combat the coronavirus continues to haunt her on a daily basis.

Birx, who was the response coordinator for Trump’s White House coronavirus task force, told ABC News’ Terry Moran on Monday that the president’s now-infamous suggestion seriously unnerved her.

“That moment ― obviously, there’s a lot of tape on that; you can see how extraordinarily uncomfortable I was,” Birx said in the interview. “Unfortunately, he was not speaking to me, he was speaking to the [Department of Homeland Security] scientists who had presented the data. And when he did turn to me, I said, ‘Not a treatment.’”

Trump made those comments last spring, at the height of the pandemic’s first wave in the U.S. At the April 23, 2020, press conference, the president pondered aloud whether sunlight, heat or disinfectant could “cure” the virus.

“Suppose that we hit the body with tremendous ― whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light ― and I think you said that it hasn’t been checked and you’re going to test it,” Trump said to Birx and DHS scientists who had presented information suggesting the virus would not survive well in humidity. “Then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in one minute. Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? ... It would be interesting to check that.”

Birx responded to Trump that while a high fever meant the body was responding against threats, light and heat were not treatments for the coronavirus.

In Monday’s interview, Birx said she had spent almost 30 years in the military and served under a number of presidents, and “those of you who have served in the military know that there are discussions you have in private with your commanding officers and there’s discussions you had in public.”

“Frankly, I didn’t know how to handle that episode,” Birx said. “I still think about it everyday. When I was spoken to, I said, ‘not a treatment,’ but I guess some people thought I should run up onstage and interrupt this dialogue that was going on between the DHS scientists and the president, but I was just not trained in my years of training to react that way.”

Birx has received criticism for not speaking up against Trump’s pseudoscience, with CNN accusing her earlier this year of giving “milquetoast answers” to the president’s inquiries.

She previously said that the Trump White House’s politicization of the coronavirus deeply taxed her, and told ABC News that she had discussed “how to correct the record” many times with Dr. Anthony Fauci. She also said the vaccine rollout made her optimistic, and speculated that the individual state responses to COVID-19 would be “studied for decades” to come.

For much of his adult life, Donald Trump was known for going after his enemies with frivolous lawsuits, so much so that by the time he ran for president in 2016, he and his businesses had been involved in at least 3,500 legal actions. According to a 2016 report, Trump had no qualms about responding to “even small disputes with overwhelming legal force” and didn’t “hesitate to deploy his wealth and legal firepower against adversaries with limited resources,” sometimes refusing “to pay real estate brokers, lawyers, and other vendors.” In other words, he was a consummate bully who used his money and power to screw over little people, and never worried about the tables being turned, as he would simply countersue, like his family business did in the 1970s when the Justice Department accused it of discriminatory housing practices. But as the old saying goes, “karma is a bitch and she relishes the idea of a litigious a-hole living out his last days in prison."

On top of the well-publicized investigations into Trump out of New York—one from Attorney General Letitia James and the other from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.—the ex-president is facing no fewer than three probes concerning his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Two of those investigations are based out of Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said in February she is looking into Trump’s infamous call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which the then president pressured Raffensperger to “find” him the necessary votes to win. Willis’s investigation is criminal in nature and will reportedly focus on whether or not Trump broke state laws against “solicitation of election fraud,” racketeering, conspiracy, or making threats related to the election administration. Separately, Raffensperger’s office is also probing Trump’s actions. Additionally, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has opened a criminal investigation into Trump’s actions on the day an angry mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol and tried to block the certification of Joe Biden’s win; according to a spokesperson for Racine, the A.G. is probing if Trump violated D.C. law by “inciting or provoking violence.” While Racine would not be able to charge the 45th president with a felony due to the limits of D.C. law, per The Washington Post, if charged, he could be arrested in the District of Columbia, effectively ensuring he’ll never step foot in the nation’s capital again. On top of that the Department of Justice has launched a broad investigation into the Capitol attack, which could mean it is looking into the ex-president’s role.

And then there are the lawsuits! Per The Washington Post:

- "Trump must defend himself against a growing raft of lawsuits: 29 are pending at last count, including some seeking damages from Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, when he encouraged a march to the Capitol that ended in a mob storming the building…. Among the 29 lawsuits Trump is facing, about 18 result from disputes with his properties: slip-and-fall suits, an allegation about bedbugs at Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, a suit alleging that his Chicago hotel sucked out river water without a permit. These are the kinds of suits Trump might have faced whether or not he was president. But his single term may still hamper his ability to fight them: The law firm Seyfarth Shaw, which represented Trump in some of these disputes, quit in reaction to the events of Jan. 6. His lawyers in the Chicago River suit have also quit, though they declined to say why."

The rest of the suits seem to have been brought on by his presidency: They focus on Trump’s actions or on long-hidden business practices that were revealed while he was under the presidential spotlight.

In Washington, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, filed a suit accusing Trump of conspiring to intimidate and block Congress’s certification of the 2020 election. Thompson’s case relies on the Ku Klux Klan Act, enacted after the Civil War in 1871 to bar violent interference in Congress’s constitutional duties. It seeks unspecified monetary damages from Trump, Trump’s attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and two far-right militant groups whose affiliates have been charged in the Capitol assault, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

Trump is also dealing with defamation lawsuits brought by Summer Zervos and E. Jean Carroll, both of whom allege Trump sexually assaulted them, which he of course denies, just like he has denied the dozens of other sexual misconduct allegations against him. In the case of Carroll, Trump tried to use the weight of the Justice Department to get the suit thrown out, a protection obviously no longer afforded to him as an ex-president. In another case, a group of current and former tenants in Trump buildings allege Donald and his late father, Fred Trump, used phony invoices to illegally raise their rents, a scheme revealed by The New York Times.

As the Post notes, though Trump is clearly no stranger to legal drama, the unique position he finds himself in postpresidency (and post-insurrection) means he may very well be f--ed:

- "Trump has fallen to a point of historic vulnerability before the law. He has lost the formal immunities of the presidency and the legal firepower of the Justice Department, but he is also without some of the informal shields that protected him even before he was president: his reputation for endless wealth and his clout as a political donor in New York.

Now, prosecutors roam free in his financial records. New lawsuits keep arriving. Some of his key lawyers have quit. A man who once used the law to swamp his enemies, overwhelming them with claims and legal bills, is finding himself on the other side of the wave, unable to control what comes next.

Until recently, “at his level, there was no such thing as being in ‘legal trouble,’ in the way that ordinary people think about it,” said Michael D’Antonio, who wrote a 2015 biography of Trump. He said Trump usually had something he could hold over the head of his opponents: withholding donations, bad press or a messy countersuit. Today, D’Antonio said, in the urban and liberal jurisdictions where Trump is facing the most peril, “nobody needs him now.” “What does he have to offer anybody? And in fact there’s every incentive to crush him,” D’Antonio told the Post."

Though there are many to choose from, presumably the most worrisome legal issue facing Trump is Vance’s criminal investigation, which is looking into possible insurance, bank, and tax fraud. Last month, the Manhattan D.A.’s office hired Mark Pomerantz, who helped put John Gotti and others involved in organized crime behind bars, to work on the Trump case. Among other things, Pomerantz has reportedly been working on getting Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime CFO who knows where all the bodies are buried, to flip. Equally terrifying, for someone trying to stay out of prison, is the fact that Vance has something no other investigator looking into Trump’s affairs has had before: the ex-president’s tax returns, which the former real estate developer curiously refused to release while running for office and fought tooth and nail to keep secret. After the Supreme Court rejected his last-ditch attempt to keep the information out of Vance‘s hands, Trump flew off the handle, calling himself the victim of “the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of our Country.” And while that’s not actually true, you can probably understand why he was upset! As former fixer Michael Cohen told the Post, “the level of review” being undertaken by Vance’s office, “is unprecedented in Trump’s corporate history,” on par with “a proctological exam of the highest order.”

P.S. Trump is also financially screwed

Yes, he’s still worth some $2.5 billion, but that’s down $700 million since he became president and it appears the number may continue to plummet, per the Post:

- "Several of his hotels and resorts reported sharp downturns in 2020. At Trump Tower in Manhattan, one major commercial tenant—Tiffany & Co.—is planning to vacate its space. Another, Marc Fisher Footwear, stopped paying rent in November, according to a lawsuit the Trump Organization filed against the footwear company this month. The company owes more than $1.4 million in back payments, according to the suit."

Meanwhile, thanks to the events of January 6, 2021, Trump can no longer rely on previous sources of income like hosting LPGA events, which may make it difficult to repay the $1 billion he owes creditors. On the other hand, who knows how much money he’ll make scamming his supporters through his super PAC!

How stupid is hitor?

My stupidity isn't relevant

The following article is more realistic about the situation...

I'd have to wonder why you'd devote time to undermining someone who is no longer in a position of influence...

Donald Trump Is Drowning in Criminal Investigations and Legally Screwed

Abuses like these are why we need to outlaw the Democratic Party.

Mr. Trump is not committing any abuses.

The Democratic Party is.

Not in the generally understood meaning of the term "abuse".

Hell, why stop with outlawing political parties -- why not outlaw the concept of "law" itself?

Using the law as a weapon to destroy the lives of people that you don't agree with is an abuse of power.

What is bad is political parties who abuse their power.

So people with whom you disagree politically are granted impunity for their crimes?

But political parties don't "abuse power" — political parties don't have the standing to exercise power, let alone abuse it. The parties themselves have very little power. You are referring to the power of individuals, offices, and departments in particular administrations, not the parties themselves.

Ex-president praised couple at Mar-a-Lago – after complaining about Biden’s Iran and China policy, the border and the election

Donald Trump took the microphone at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday night, to praise a couple getting married at his Florida resort. Nearly 400 words later he did so, according to video published by the website TMZ, after a rambling complaint about Joe Biden’s policy towards Iran and China, the situation at the border with Mexico and the supposed fraud he claims caused his election defeat.

“Y’know,” the tuxedoed former president began, standing in front of a waiting band, “I just got, I turned off the news, I get all these flash reports, and they’re telling me about the border, they’re telling me about China, they’re telling me about Iran – how’re we doing with Iran, how do you like that?

“Boy, they were ready to make a deal, they would have done anything, they would have done anything, and this guy goes and drops the sanctions and then he says, ‘We’d love to negotiate now,’ [and Iran replies], ‘We’re not dealing with the United States at all,’ Oh, well, they don’t want to deal with us.”
[...]
“And China, the same thing, they never treated us that way, right?”
[...]
In Florida, Trump continued: “You saw what happened a few days ago, was terrible, and uh, the border is not good, the border is the worst anybody’s ever seen it, and what you see now, multiply it times 10, Jim – he’s the only one I know who would handle the border tougher than me.”

It was not immediately clear to which Jim the former president was referring, and pointing.
[...]
Trump said: “What’s happening to the kids, they’re living in squalor, they are living like nobody has ever seen anybody, there’s never been anything like what’s, and you’re gonna have hundreds, and you have it now, they have the airplane photos, the shots, and they call ’em shots, and these things are showing thousands and thousands of people coming up from South America and it’s gonna be, it’s just uh, look, it’s a disaster.”

Trump did not mention his administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents, which Biden is not following.

“It’s a humanitarian disaster from their standpoint,” he continued, “and it’s gonna destroy the country, and frankly, the country can’t afford it because you’re talking about massive, just incredibly massive amounts. Our school systems, our hospital systems, everything.

“So it’s a rough thing, and I just say, ‘Do you miss me yet?’”
[...]
Trump duly moved on to the 2020 election, in which he insists Democrats cheated, a lie repeatedly laughed out of court but which inspired the 6 January Capitol attack, in which five people died and more than 400 people face federal charges. Trump was impeached a second time – and acquitted again.

“We did get 75m votes,” Trump said at Mar-a-Lago, which was nearly true, as he collected around 74.3m. Either way, his problem was that Biden got 81.3m.

“Nobody’s ever gotten that,” Trump said. “They said, ‘Get 66m votes, sir” – a fraction more than Hillary Clinton got when she beat him in the popular vote in 2016 – “and the election’s over.’ We got 75m and they said … but you know, you saw what happened, 10.30 in the evening, all of a sudden I said, ‘That’s a strange thing, why are they closing up certain places, right?’

“Now, a lot of things happening right now. I just wanted to say, it’s an honor to be here, it’s an honor to have you at Mar-a-Lago, you are a great and beautiful couple … have fun.”