Greg , this piece tells it like it is, so eloquently. America is in a fight for truth and reality. My brain and soul are battered, but I take comfort in truthtellers like you. Thank you
Helen, thank you for being honest about your own feelings. I feel battered as well and I am not sure what the future holds as my brain runs through all the worst possible scenarios. I too, take comfort and people that are brave enough to tell the truth.
At this point, how can the soul and the brain of any person paying attention NOT feel battered? We have been subject to YEARS of psychological assault and battery. We just have to keep telling the truth.
It is the LIES. We always just move on. Yet, there are now “alternative facts,” believed as absolute gospel truth, by the entire cult, from the true believers to “normal” people. When there is no objective truth, we are SCREWED. I am sorry, but we just are. How can anyone think otherwise? If a clear narcissistic criminal and psychopath can get 77 million votes, what do we do? Truth is dead, it really is.
I understand how you feel, Rick. But I cannot accept that the truth is dead. We have to do all that we can too stand strong in what we know to be true and not give in. Although, I have to admit it twists my brain and aggravates my spirit to no end to hear the lies and have them be accepted!
Remember that there were close to 90 million who did NOT vote. So, we can potentially add their votes, especially now. Add to that at least half of the dissatisfied 77 million. We've got a shot. Let's take it and run with it with loud voices, protests, demands of our democratic leaders. Ever onward!
The silver lining here is, if we can survive this, the Trump debacle could be the impetus for major positive change in the US. Eventually. if we survive. Most people don't like him, and there are more people who hate his guts than love him.
It certainly has gone off the rails much faster than I thought it would...and I thought it would go off the rails fast. As for truth, if we draw a red line today, there's enough we know as factual from the LAST eight years to convince anyone willing to listen what the truth is. We have to hope that it will get bad enough for people to wake up, but no so bad that we all die first. Fun times!
Greg, I read both books back then and found them illuminating. They resonate each time this evil psychopath opens his mouth. Other than those who follow you, who else out of those MAGA lobotomized “Americans” would really know the truth? So terribly frustrating and scary.
Thanks Rusalka. The truth is there, and is pretty obvious to anyone willing to look for it. I found it true the first go-round, and even more so now, that it was essential to keep reviewing stuff that's already happened, because there's so much horror that we forget. But the truth is there, and maybe people who have had their heads in the sand are looking around wondering WTF happened.
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When someone starts to hiss 🐍 like Trump did in this interview you know they’re loosing it. He was holding on to his temper by a hair. His vicious statements about Biden to deflect are desperate. With threats of deportation of anyone, “illegals” or citizens. He’s going full blown mad king. And, wow, telling Mr Moran to just say “yes!”
He’s unhinged, dangerous. His rabid juvenile delinquent pets
are champing at the bit for anything they can construe as a signal.
We need some tough-assed reporters who can stick the truth up his ass and make it hurt.
What you see is what he does: intimidation and threats. Despite the possible consequences, some reporter needs to expose him. When someone is on the edge like he is, it is relatively easy to push them over. There may be consequences; every interview now is like storming the beach at Normandy.
The challenge is, he has control over who he talks to. The WH press corps is now people on the Kremlin payroll, plus a few moron Fox folks. Maybe a foreign correspondent. Like a Canadian reporter next week, when Carney is in town?
It certainly seems like he's about to have a psychological break. Crossing a line even his MAGA faithful cannot explain away. Exposing himself in public, pawing someone with the cameras on, getting uncontrollably angry, etc.
I got up way too early musing on Kilmar's tattoos. There is no doubt that the photoshopped picture shows the same sequence of tattoos Kilmar had; you can see them in the picture of him with Senator Van Hollen. They show up on his hand in a picture of him with his baby son back in perhaps 2017. But is the picture trump shows around actually Kilmar's? The background is a hairy stomach, and for the life of me I can't find any similar picture showing HIS stomach.
I can see the MS (though sonrisa could actually be la mueca, grin which would make it MM. The last two are really, really stretching it. For example, if you add up the numerical values of the letters in MS and add 13 you get ....45!! Proof positive that trump 1.0 is a gang member. One can waste an entire morning coming up with different numerological interpretations.
He left El Salvador at 16. Has anyone looked to see whether this was a common tattoo for teens in the place he lived? In any event, even if it IS a MS-13 tattoo he was being targeted by a rival gang and could have got the tattoo in hopes of getting protection against them. And if he got it IN El Salvador for whatever reason at say 2007-2010 that's no proof he is still connected with the reason he got it, now that he is 30.
A gang with a sense of humor could adopt as a symbol a butterfly tattoo. I hate to THINK of the number of people who were kids in the 90s could now be accused of being gang members. Remember Monty Python's Confuse a Cat? This could be a gang's Confuse a Cop.
The whole thing is preposterous. I don't really understand tattoo culture, even though I have a tattoo, but people under the age of, say, 40 have a LOT of ink these days. A marijuana leaf and a smile seem to indicate a love of having a good time smoking weed, not gang membership. Which is why Knucklehead needed the letters to explain it. But it wasn't even convincing to him.
Abrego Garcia left El Salvador bc he was being pressured to join the gang. He left to AVOID joining the gang. MAGA is so dumb.
I love to read/listen to Mary Trump for her insights (has PhD in psychology) and great analysis! Trump & family members ‘condemned & disinherited’ her father who had a problem with alcohol & wanted to pursue a career other than real estate! Thus, Trump stayed away from alcohol he says…….but then pursued DRUGS as you mention??? Interesting which may also seriously explain other baffling, inexplicable & incomprehensible behavioral aspects……….and I don’t ever remember Mary Trump discussing this in her analysis…
There's so much to discuss with him, she probably sticks to what she knows and what other people might not. I know for a fact that news outlets were told by their legal depts never to say anything about the drug use, even as the effects were obvious. Also, there was a report I wrote about ("Comfortably Dumb") that details the rampant WH RX drug abuse during his first term.
Great article. I had forgotten about so much of this early craziness. Cannot believe we have to live through him again, only this time more demented & shored up by the worst of us. M'aidez, indeed.
Many names for he who lies repeatedly, everything, everywhere, all the time, in clinical terms a pathological liar. Yes calling the imbecile out is important. Most dangerous is not that he lies, it is that he believes them as truths, acts upon such "truths" in his alternative reality, making policy decisions that his party rubber stamps into law. Pointing out his lies, extremely important. More importantly, giving real time examples of times when these alternative facts have caused harm to everyday people in real time.
Can't wait for-" long live the king, the king is dead". SADLY the king becomes JD Eyeliner McCouchFuck. This is known as jumping from the pan into the fire. However JD doesn't have the orange imbeciles following, both in Congree and MAGA land, perhaps a sliver of a silver lining. Perhaps the storm in a teacup before the calm.
Vance is a disgusting fascist, as I wrote about in my Dark Enlightement pieces a while ago, but he doesn't have the cult that Trump does, and no one actually likes him. I don't see anyone on their side with the charisma to be a cult leader. They are all empty suits.
Trump is so clearly seriously mentally ill, which makes trying to get to any sort of a rational outcome virtually impossible. When I was a medical student I spent my obligatory month of psychiatry at a psychiatric hospital for severely mentally ill patients. I was interviewing a young woman when the psychiatrist stopped me. He said, we’ll place her on an antipsychotic for a couple of weeks and try again. What a difference. If only we could do the same with Trump.
John, I believe you're talking about antipsychotic drugs that RFK wants to do away with, because cod liver oil and vitamin A have the same result. [bangs head against wall]
I wonder what meds, if any, could cure what ails him. Noel says he does Adderal. [sp?] That would indicate ADHD, if it's a legit RX. And that tracks.
In my opinion, he has a smorgasbord of symptoms from the Cluster A and Cluster B personality disorders, one of which is sociopathic. And I think he’s an undiagnosed dyslexic. BTW, Adderall is a mixture of 4 salts of amphetamine, which means besides being used for ADHD, it’s a euphoriant. He probably takes it when he did one of his manic long-winded rallies.
Correct, Cal, and good point. We are at the phase where Marco von Ribbentrop can arrest whoever he likes, send them to El Salvador, and wash his hands of it as the person dies miserably without a hint of due process. It's scary and it's supposed to be.
I didn't watch the ABC interview and only realized that Trump thought the MS13 displayed above the knuckles was an actual tattoo when I saw the exchange on news programs. So, a visual aid, added in what looks to be an Ariel font, for Trump's "reminder" of what the actual tattoos purport to show, BECOMES the tattoo? Yeah, as if we needed another reminder ourselves, Trump is a fucking idiot.
But the king can NEVER be wrong, so that explanation will persist, while Abrego Garcia rots in a Salvadorian prison for no reason. I don't know the man, and yes, I've heard all about his domestic problems through the years with his wife, something Pam Bondi likes to point out as yet another justification why he should be in a foreign prison, but unlike anyone in Trump's administration, people actually DO change. I used to be a literal altar boy, and I am no longer an altar boy. In 1976 I voted for Gerald Ford, and I wouldn't DREAM of doing something like that now.
But none of that matters because the king can NEVER be wrong. The Photoshopped, Ariel font, MS13 tattoo will remain the proof behind Abrego Garcia's incarceration. The tariffs will remain in place, and probably get worse, even as foreign products become scarce or unaffordable and it drops us into a recession -- "It's BIDEN'S recession!!" And short of the Angel of Death making a visit, we're stuck with this fucking, demented, asshole for the next four years. We live in interesting times, indeed.
I agree with everything you said and agree that people can change and they evolve overtime. I went from Liberal to conservative back to liberal as I have seen different things happen and have evolved as a person. But I do want to say that, unfortunately what is happening is not just gonna last for four years as Greg had touched on in this article. There’s lasting damage being done to the fabric of our country, in our belief systems, and our perception of what is true and our ability to glean from everything we read what is actually true. This is not a short term problem that’s gonna be solved with Trump leaving the White House. All the Republicans are on this ride and I’m not sure why except for perhaps money.
A number of GOP politicians have said they are afraid of retribution from MAGA. They believe they and their families are in danger if they don't bend the knee. To which I say: resign. If you're too craven to do the job, let someone else do it. But mostly it's money and power and ego and kompromat.
We have to hope that things get bad enough that his ouster is the impetus for positive change. It's a hard needle to thread.
Thanks for this, Steve. This makes me think of the whole concept of crime and punishment. There are, for sure, certain criminal brain types who are beyond fixing...Trump is included there...but I'm sure many if not most felons are capable of being rehabilitated. The question is, does society want a penal system that tries to rehabilitate, or one that strictly punishes/humiliates? MAGA wants the latter, of course.
He will lie like his mentor Roy Cohn lied about the nature of his terminal illness, and one hopes he dies just as miserably and just as alone.
He will die alone in spirit, if not physically alone because he is not emotionally able to form any kind of personal connection and bond with others. He is completely depraved.
I love you so much because you have the courage to tell the truth without fear! I’m so grateful to you for giving me hope for the future because of that. You buoy up my hope that our country can come out of this. Many thanks.
Yes, Trump is incredibly stupid, and yes, “he is talking” and “he is lying” are virtually the same thing. But I suspect that sometimes we assume the latter when it’s more a case of the former. Take the PhotoShopped picture of Abrego Garcia’s knuckles. For Trump to be actually lying he’d have to understand that PhotoShop exists, that it was used on the photo in question, and that it was given to him for the purpose of deceiving. I’m not willing to make those assumptions. It was probably, “Here, look at this!” and he doesn’t have the brain power to discern that its altered. Just sayin’.
Greg , this piece tells it like it is, so eloquently. America is in a fight for truth and reality. My brain and soul are battered, but I take comfort in truthtellers like you. Thank you
Helen, thank you for being honest about your own feelings. I feel battered as well and I am not sure what the future holds as my brain runs through all the worst possible scenarios. I too, take comfort and people that are brave enough to tell the truth.
At this point, how can the soul and the brain of any person paying attention NOT feel battered? We have been subject to YEARS of psychological assault and battery. We just have to keep telling the truth.
Thanks, Helen. We know what reality actually is, and we have to demand that it be recognized.
It is the LIES. We always just move on. Yet, there are now “alternative facts,” believed as absolute gospel truth, by the entire cult, from the true believers to “normal” people. When there is no objective truth, we are SCREWED. I am sorry, but we just are. How can anyone think otherwise? If a clear narcissistic criminal and psychopath can get 77 million votes, what do we do? Truth is dead, it really is.
If the truth is alive for you, nothing can touch it.
Make your statement active: trump kills the truth as a matter of process. He's a killer.
I like that, Billy. Truthslayer.
I understand how you feel, Rick. But I cannot accept that the truth is dead. We have to do all that we can too stand strong in what we know to be true and not give in. Although, I have to admit it twists my brain and aggravates my spirit to no end to hear the lies and have them be accepted!
Remember that there were close to 90 million who did NOT vote. So, we can potentially add their votes, especially now. Add to that at least half of the dissatisfied 77 million. We've got a shot. Let's take it and run with it with loud voices, protests, demands of our democratic leaders. Ever onward!
The silver lining here is, if we can survive this, the Trump debacle could be the impetus for major positive change in the US. Eventually. if we survive. Most people don't like him, and there are more people who hate his guts than love him.
But the lovers have the power. Entrenched power is meant to last, by whatever means.
It certainly has gone off the rails much faster than I thought it would...and I thought it would go off the rails fast. As for truth, if we draw a red line today, there's enough we know as factual from the LAST eight years to convince anyone willing to listen what the truth is. We have to hope that it will get bad enough for people to wake up, but no so bad that we all die first. Fun times!
It’s hard to know what to believe these days. BUT I believe that you Greg have hit the f.. king nail on the head.
Thanks for your hard work. Billserle.com
Thanks, Bill. Much appreciated.
Greg, I read both books back then and found them illuminating. They resonate each time this evil psychopath opens his mouth. Other than those who follow you, who else out of those MAGA lobotomized “Americans” would really know the truth? So terribly frustrating and scary.
Thanks Rusalka. The truth is there, and is pretty obvious to anyone willing to look for it. I found it true the first go-round, and even more so now, that it was essential to keep reviewing stuff that's already happened, because there's so much horror that we forget. But the truth is there, and maybe people who have had their heads in the sand are looking around wondering WTF happened.
Love your book, and you as well!
Me too, Meemaw! Greg does “cut to the chase” and nail it every single time. If only the country would pay attention and wise up……….
Thanks, Rick!
Thank you Meemaw! : )
Struggling to find new ways to mislead people? Worried a pesky reporter will expose you?
Use this INSIDER'S GUIDE adapted by Democracy Labs from research by Dr. Rand Waltzman, disinformation expert to improve your ability to lie, evade questions, intimidate journalists and spread disinformation.
https://thedemlabs.org/2023/12/09/how-to-spread-disinformation/
Thank you, Deepak!
When someone starts to hiss 🐍 like Trump did in this interview you know they’re loosing it. He was holding on to his temper by a hair. His vicious statements about Biden to deflect are desperate. With threats of deportation of anyone, “illegals” or citizens. He’s going full blown mad king. And, wow, telling Mr Moran to just say “yes!”
He’s unhinged, dangerous. His rabid juvenile delinquent pets
are champing at the bit for anything they can construe as a signal.
We need some tough-assed reporters who can stick the truth up his ass and make it hurt.
What you see is what he does: intimidation and threats. Despite the possible consequences, some reporter needs to expose him. When someone is on the edge like he is, it is relatively easy to push them over. There may be consequences; every interview now is like storming the beach at Normandy.
The challenge is, he has control over who he talks to. The WH press corps is now people on the Kremlin payroll, plus a few moron Fox folks. Maybe a foreign correspondent. Like a Canadian reporter next week, when Carney is in town?
It certainly seems like he's about to have a psychological break. Crossing a line even his MAGA faithful cannot explain away. Exposing himself in public, pawing someone with the cameras on, getting uncontrollably angry, etc.
I got up way too early musing on Kilmar's tattoos. There is no doubt that the photoshopped picture shows the same sequence of tattoos Kilmar had; you can see them in the picture of him with Senator Van Hollen. They show up on his hand in a picture of him with his baby son back in perhaps 2017. But is the picture trump shows around actually Kilmar's? The background is a hairy stomach, and for the life of me I can't find any similar picture showing HIS stomach.
I can see the MS (though sonrisa could actually be la mueca, grin which would make it MM. The last two are really, really stretching it. For example, if you add up the numerical values of the letters in MS and add 13 you get ....45!! Proof positive that trump 1.0 is a gang member. One can waste an entire morning coming up with different numerological interpretations.
He left El Salvador at 16. Has anyone looked to see whether this was a common tattoo for teens in the place he lived? In any event, even if it IS a MS-13 tattoo he was being targeted by a rival gang and could have got the tattoo in hopes of getting protection against them. And if he got it IN El Salvador for whatever reason at say 2007-2010 that's no proof he is still connected with the reason he got it, now that he is 30.
A gang with a sense of humor could adopt as a symbol a butterfly tattoo. I hate to THINK of the number of people who were kids in the 90s could now be accused of being gang members. Remember Monty Python's Confuse a Cat? This could be a gang's Confuse a Cop.
The whole thing is preposterous. I don't really understand tattoo culture, even though I have a tattoo, but people under the age of, say, 40 have a LOT of ink these days. A marijuana leaf and a smile seem to indicate a love of having a good time smoking weed, not gang membership. Which is why Knucklehead needed the letters to explain it. But it wasn't even convincing to him.
Abrego Garcia left El Salvador bc he was being pressured to join the gang. He left to AVOID joining the gang. MAGA is so dumb.
I love to read/listen to Mary Trump for her insights (has PhD in psychology) and great analysis! Trump & family members ‘condemned & disinherited’ her father who had a problem with alcohol & wanted to pursue a career other than real estate! Thus, Trump stayed away from alcohol he says…….but then pursued DRUGS as you mention??? Interesting which may also seriously explain other baffling, inexplicable & incomprehensible behavioral aspects……….and I don’t ever remember Mary Trump discussing this in her analysis…
There's so much to discuss with him, she probably sticks to what she knows and what other people might not. I know for a fact that news outlets were told by their legal depts never to say anything about the drug use, even as the effects were obvious. Also, there was a report I wrote about ("Comfortably Dumb") that details the rampant WH RX drug abuse during his first term.
Great article. I had forgotten about so much of this early craziness. Cannot believe we have to live through him again, only this time more demented & shored up by the worst of us. M'aidez, indeed.
Thanks. Me too! That's why I decided to read it again. It's important, I think, to keep reviewing all the crazy and the bad.
So much gets pushed aside or covered in the mountain of crap. By design of course. Thanks for shoveling.
Many names for he who lies repeatedly, everything, everywhere, all the time, in clinical terms a pathological liar. Yes calling the imbecile out is important. Most dangerous is not that he lies, it is that he believes them as truths, acts upon such "truths" in his alternative reality, making policy decisions that his party rubber stamps into law. Pointing out his lies, extremely important. More importantly, giving real time examples of times when these alternative facts have caused harm to everyday people in real time.
Can't wait for-" long live the king, the king is dead". SADLY the king becomes JD Eyeliner McCouchFuck. This is known as jumping from the pan into the fire. However JD doesn't have the orange imbeciles following, both in Congree and MAGA land, perhaps a sliver of a silver lining. Perhaps the storm in a teacup before the calm.
I can still dream!
LOL Eyeliner McCouchfuck. I love it.
Vance is a disgusting fascist, as I wrote about in my Dark Enlightement pieces a while ago, but he doesn't have the cult that Trump does, and no one actually likes him. I don't see anyone on their side with the charisma to be a cult leader. They are all empty suits.
Trump is so clearly seriously mentally ill, which makes trying to get to any sort of a rational outcome virtually impossible. When I was a medical student I spent my obligatory month of psychiatry at a psychiatric hospital for severely mentally ill patients. I was interviewing a young woman when the psychiatrist stopped me. He said, we’ll place her on an antipsychotic for a couple of weeks and try again. What a difference. If only we could do the same with Trump.
John, I believe you're talking about antipsychotic drugs that RFK wants to do away with, because cod liver oil and vitamin A have the same result. [bangs head against wall]
I wonder what meds, if any, could cure what ails him. Noel says he does Adderal. [sp?] That would indicate ADHD, if it's a legit RX. And that tracks.
In my opinion, he has a smorgasbord of symptoms from the Cluster A and Cluster B personality disorders, one of which is sociopathic. And I think he’s an undiagnosed dyslexic. BTW, Adderall is a mixture of 4 salts of amphetamine, which means besides being used for ADHD, it’s a euphoriant. He probably takes it when he did one of his manic long-winded rallies.
Nailed him, in my humble opinion.
Easy to overdose on Vit. a. Wait for it.
He is evil, no cure or treatment for that. Not discounting the mental illness, but they are not mutually exclusive.
The issue is gigantictly bigger than how bad is Abrego Garcia.
It's about next up for incarceration in CECOT may be anybody Trump and sycophants want gone. "First they came......."
Correct, Cal, and good point. We are at the phase where Marco von Ribbentrop can arrest whoever he likes, send them to El Salvador, and wash his hands of it as the person dies miserably without a hint of due process. It's scary and it's supposed to be.
Deliberate
I didn't watch the ABC interview and only realized that Trump thought the MS13 displayed above the knuckles was an actual tattoo when I saw the exchange on news programs. So, a visual aid, added in what looks to be an Ariel font, for Trump's "reminder" of what the actual tattoos purport to show, BECOMES the tattoo? Yeah, as if we needed another reminder ourselves, Trump is a fucking idiot.
But the king can NEVER be wrong, so that explanation will persist, while Abrego Garcia rots in a Salvadorian prison for no reason. I don't know the man, and yes, I've heard all about his domestic problems through the years with his wife, something Pam Bondi likes to point out as yet another justification why he should be in a foreign prison, but unlike anyone in Trump's administration, people actually DO change. I used to be a literal altar boy, and I am no longer an altar boy. In 1976 I voted for Gerald Ford, and I wouldn't DREAM of doing something like that now.
But none of that matters because the king can NEVER be wrong. The Photoshopped, Ariel font, MS13 tattoo will remain the proof behind Abrego Garcia's incarceration. The tariffs will remain in place, and probably get worse, even as foreign products become scarce or unaffordable and it drops us into a recession -- "It's BIDEN'S recession!!" And short of the Angel of Death making a visit, we're stuck with this fucking, demented, asshole for the next four years. We live in interesting times, indeed.
I agree with everything you said and agree that people can change and they evolve overtime. I went from Liberal to conservative back to liberal as I have seen different things happen and have evolved as a person. But I do want to say that, unfortunately what is happening is not just gonna last for four years as Greg had touched on in this article. There’s lasting damage being done to the fabric of our country, in our belief systems, and our perception of what is true and our ability to glean from everything we read what is actually true. This is not a short term problem that’s gonna be solved with Trump leaving the White House. All the Republicans are on this ride and I’m not sure why except for perhaps money.
A number of GOP politicians have said they are afraid of retribution from MAGA. They believe they and their families are in danger if they don't bend the knee. To which I say: resign. If you're too craven to do the job, let someone else do it. But mostly it's money and power and ego and kompromat.
We have to hope that things get bad enough that his ouster is the impetus for positive change. It's a hard needle to thread.
Thanks for this, Steve. This makes me think of the whole concept of crime and punishment. There are, for sure, certain criminal brain types who are beyond fixing...Trump is included there...but I'm sure many if not most felons are capable of being rehabilitated. The question is, does society want a penal system that tries to rehabilitate, or one that strictly punishes/humiliates? MAGA wants the latter, of course.
He will lie like his mentor Roy Cohn lied about the nature of his terminal illness, and one hopes he dies just as miserably and just as alone.
He will die alone in spirit, if not physically alone because he is not emotionally able to form any kind of personal connection and bond with others. He is completely depraved.
My dream
I love you so much because you have the courage to tell the truth without fear! I’m so grateful to you for giving me hope for the future because of that. You buoy up my hope that our country can come out of this. Many thanks.
Thanks, Patricia. I appreciate that.
Agree 100%. he reads my mind. Maybe not a good thing these days, but makes me know that I didn’t dream all this.
Yes, Trump is incredibly stupid, and yes, “he is talking” and “he is lying” are virtually the same thing. But I suspect that sometimes we assume the latter when it’s more a case of the former. Take the PhotoShopped picture of Abrego Garcia’s knuckles. For Trump to be actually lying he’d have to understand that PhotoShop exists, that it was used on the photo in question, and that it was given to him for the purpose of deceiving. I’m not willing to make those assumptions. It was probably, “Here, look at this!” and he doesn’t have the brain power to discern that its altered. Just sayin’.
Ha! You're right, Earl. He really is that stupid...