A Warning

by Anonymous

Americans deserve for this autumn to be a season of candor about Donald Trump.

Unexpectedly evergreen sentiment

“Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionaries and rebels—men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.” —Dwight D. Eisenhower

Former president Theodore Roosevelt argued that it was treacherous not to criticize the nation’s chief executive, as long as it was honest criticism. “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public,” he wrote. “Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about anyone else.”

That would be like speaking Aramaic to Trump through a pillow;

One graphic that left Trump spellbound was intended to explain certain government and industrial relationships. The basic depiction of interlocked gears, likely pulled from clip art, showed how different elements of the government bureaucracy depended on parts of the private sector. The president was so mesmerized that he showed it off to Oval Office visitors for no apparent reason, leaving us—and them—scratching our heads. Another time he became enamored with a parody poster in the style of Game of Thrones, with the words “Sanctions Are Coming,” overlaid on a photo of the president. This was meant to be a teaser for forthcoming Iran sanctions. Trump was elated and tweeted the image out to his followers at once, resulting in a cycle of memes mocking the graphic.

Jared is a likable person,

Uh, hard disagree, bro, but sure

These qualities came to be known as the “cardinal virtues”: wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice.

In real life, a successful CEO has to absorb a lot of information, about the economic climate, about his or her competitors, about product and consumer trends. How can you manage a sprawling organization if you won’t read anything? Not very well, it turns out.

Intelligence is one of those qualities that, if you insist you have it, you probably don’t.

Thus, aside from bravery, the checklist for a courageous person includes resistance to the mob mentality, avoidance of obsession with money and pleasure, and stability through crises.

(Here again I can’t resist citing Margaret Thatcher, who dealt with men like this: “Power is like being a lady,” she remarked. “If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”)

The webstore literally sells sandals with a Trump tweet on the left shoe contradicted by a Trump tweet on the right shoe, including gems such as: his claim that the Electoral College was a “disaster for a democracy”; followed by an online post hailing the Electoral College as “actually genius” after he won the election. His tweet citing an “extremely credible source” with rumors about Barack Obama; followed by a warning to his followers: “Remember, don’t believe ‘sources said’… If they don’t name the sources, the sources don’t exist.”

He’s especially vexed when we inform him the government will never be large enough or powerful enough to execute his spontaneous propositions.

The aides in the room tried not to look at one another. Hoping the storm would pass, they wondered as usual, “What does this have anything to do with… anything?”

This was like the Marlboro man saying he wasn’t a smoker.

Ironically, he wasn't.

“See?” he said, holding up a fistful of papers and waving them as he tried to make a point about how in-the-know he was on world issues. “Many countries have given us great intelligence.”

It's almost like there's a pattern of behavior

Once again, for the record, that’s how you know Donald Trump is not joking—when he sends someone out to say that he was joking.

Second, he made the very scientifically inaccurate claim that the moon is a part of Mars, despite their being separated by nearly fifty million miles.

In the meantime, the truth lies unconscious and bleeding in a ditch along the side of the road.

“The President hears a hundred voices telling him that he is the greatest man in the world. He must listen carefully indeed to hear the one voice that tells him he is not.” —Harry Truman

When people don’t have to take something seriously, they ridicule it. When they do have to take it seriously, they criticize it.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie said the candidate lacked the credentials for the nation’s highest office. “We do not need reality TV in the Oval Office right now,” Christie lamented. “President of the United States is not a place for an entertainer.”

So why y'all still stan for Reagan?

Representative Jim Jordan, a leading conservative and one of the founders of the Freedom Caucus in the US House, wished Republicans in Congress had acted sooner to “avoid creating this environment” that allowed someone like candidate Trump to rise.

LOL

Senator Lindsey Graham told American voters: “This is not about who we nominate anymore as Republicans as much as it is who we are.” He bemoaned that the party had not taken the long-shot candidate more seriously. “Any time you leave a bad idea or a dangerous idea alone, any time you ignore what could become an evil force, you wind up regretting it.” The senator said he would not vote for the man, whom he called a “jackass” and a “kook.”

You fucking simp

Rather than urge him to issue a short correction, too many aides in the West Wing were eager to help him perpetuate the lie.

A history of the Trump presidency and its aftermath in twenty-four words.

A conservative time traveler from 2016 would find the whole charade amusing, if it weren’t so serious. “Didn’t you fools hear the warnings?” he or she might say. “Republicans anticipated this. We predicted this is precisely what a Trump administration would look like!” They would be correct, of course. GOP leaders were accurate in describing the man and prophetic in forecasting the outcome of this presidency. The validity of their words hasn’t changed. What changed is their minds.

If the Trump administration is good at anything, it knows how to eat its own.

If you go back and watch the video, you’ll notice a few cabinet members declined to offer personal tribute, instead praising their workforces. They withheld the Trump flattery, and now they are gone.

How do you identify a Trump Apologist? They often display a telltale trait: smiling and nodding at the wrong time.

There are two separate types of unsavory Trump appointee. Both belong to the same genus, the Apologist, defined by their shared willingness to excuse the inexcusable. But each is its own species with distinctive characteristics. The first species is the Sycophant. The second is the Silent Abettor. The intermingling motives—power, tribalism, and fear—are what keep both species nodding in agreement.

All of the GOP officials I quoted at the outset of this chapter have since evolved from critics to Apologists.

Wow; have to confess i was not expecting this level of awareness. Good on ya.

“Who will govern the governors? There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves.” —Thomas Jefferson

As Thomas Jefferson once said, "Who watches the watchmen?"

As one said, the president’s inclinations are so bad that perhaps we should “give him enough rope” to entangle his own presidency.

Miles, that is not what that phrase means.

I thought… And then what? President Trump would stroll out of the White House, take a bow, and get on a helicopter to head home? Doubtful. If the story didn’t already sound like a B-movie, this is where it would become a horror film. Removal of the president by his own cabinet would be perceived as a coup. The end result would be unrest in the United States the likes of which we haven’t seen since maybe the Civil War. Millions would not accept the outcome, perhaps including the president himself, and many would take to the streets on both sides. Violence would be almost inevitable. The ensuing strife would break us for years to come. Among other good reasons, that is why the option was not seriously contemplated. The whispered conversations about “the Twenty-fifth” ceased, though concerns about the president’s temperament have remained.

Hindsight being what it is, I'm still forced to rhetorically ask: AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED, YA FUCKWIT

In a democracy we don’t overthrow our leaders when they’re underperforming. That’s for third-rate banana republics and police states.

... Like France and the UK?

Impeachment inquiries are painful for the country and our political system, as history has shown.

I mean, are they really though? Mostly they seem appropriate and important, if exhausting.

It’s un-American to hope our president is guilty of “high crimes.”

Buddy, we weren't HOPING they were high crimes, we KNEW they were high crimes. We were HOPING there would be CONSEQUENCES for them.

Democrats in Congress should not rush to judgment,

"Rush to judgement" doing a lot of work considering the publication date of this book

But he quickly grew accustomed to the trappings of power, the ability to summon servants or Diet Cokes with the push of a button,

Surely he could have done things without dragging us all into it. He may not be as rich as he pretends he is, but he's almost certainly, "You, boy! Diet Cokes for myself and my friends, the Titans of Industry!" rich.

He is already seeding the narrative for his followers—a narrative that could end tragically.

ok cassandra

It’s easier to fix mistakes wrought by bad policies than those wrought by bad people.

Conservatives generally respected former president Obama as a family man but despised his agenda.

Bro, really? Where is the box you live in because I'm gonna need to locate that indestructable fucker in the coming nuclear holocaust, since it's clearly strong enough to withstand some substantial impacts

We’d be better off as a party opposing the agenda of a weak president from the outside than apologizing for one from within.

Nevertheless, the counterargument to my point will be strong if the Democratic Party nominates someone deeply out of touch with mainstream America.

Oh come ON

Republicans will argue that the other candidate, as president, would attack our free-market principles, tax us into economic recession, promote a thought-police culture of political correctness, fan the flames of identity politics, and bring government into our lives like never before.

Projection so strong you could use it to show Christopher Nolan films

Democrats reading this book know how high the stakes are. I implore you, if you want a majority of our nation to reject Donald Trump, you must show wisdom and restraint in selecting your party’s nominee. Resist the temptation to swerve away from the mainstream. Trust me. We flirted with extremes in the GOP during the last cycle, and look where it got us. If Democrats do the same, Trump will be that much closer to a second term and better equipped to convince Americans to stick with him. If, however, you nominate someone who campaigns on unity instead of ideological purity, you will have a sizable number of Republicans and independents ready to make common cause.

Miles, i know you've changed your tune, but this paragraph is literally step two in how people like Trump get an audience in the first place.