-by NoahIf you watched Señor Trumpanzee’s completely unhinged speech on Pravda-TV, er, a, FOX “News” on Thursday night (Yeah, I know, why would you? Chances are you don’t drink at curb’s edge with the pigeons either), you saw something that would classify as brilliant theater if it was a scene in a remake of The Madness Of King George (Please see above clip), or, a spinoff of Woody Allen’s Bananas (see below).For the second time in two weeks (Last week was his heinous talk with the Boy Scouts of America), our severely mentally ill Grifter-In-Chief went to West Virginia, coal country, Appalachia, and arguably his largest remaining stronghold outside of Moscow; Idaho or Russia-- take your pick.Unfortunately, Trump’s Thursday performance was as much a slice of reality as it was a reflection of the insanity he shares with his followers. His entire being is a monument to the grotesque manifestations of his megalomania and he suckers in his willing and pliable followers right along. For those who actually physically attend his rallies, getting their brainwashing from the TeeVee just isn’t enough. They like it up close and personal. Unfortunately for many ticket holders, they couldn’t actually get in. Don The Con had given away so many free tickets to assure a capacity crowd that many ticket holders who got their tix on line were left outside in the drizzle and humidity, holding a soggy ticket. That Donnie! Such a man of the people!One thing is for sure: According to the latest Gallup poll, West Virginia is where Señor Trumpanzee enjoys his highest approval rating. It’s currently 25% above his disapproval rating. No doubt, that’s why his handlers send him there. It’s good for his warped ego, not to mention that he’s probably more than a little intrigued by stories that men have sex with their daughters in good old West Virginia.All crazy people need periodic reaffirmation. To do that, it helps to put Trump in a surrounding of fellow crazies. It calms his nerves and eases his massive insecurities. The medical world knows this approach but they also know that it doesn’t cure the patient. Trump’s madness will only get worse the more the reality of his mental and professional incompetence dawns on more people.On Thursday afternoon, Fox “News” had deviated somewhat from it’s usual fear-mongering, flights of fantasy, and conspiracy programming to provide its viewers with a kind of low rent Super Bowl warm up. FOX was in the streets of Huntington, interviewing the cheering ticket holders and giving the night’s festivities the best build up they could: Lots of signs, lots of red “Make America Great Again” hats, and not a pussy hat to be seen.Charles Krauthammer, who opposed Trump’s candidacy, had this to say
I don’t think he’s very well fit for the presidency. But fitness is not a reason for impeachment and removal.
Really??!!!?? Hey Charles, check out Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. No matter how bad things like the collusion, money laundering and all the rest turn out, the fact that we have a blatantly severely mentally ill man who also, at times, appears to be suffering from dementia is covered in Constitutional Amendment #25 as it relates to a president’s ability to carry out the duties of the office. Incapacitation and inability to do the job is every bit as much of a reason to remove a president as criminal and/or treasonous activity, so, why are we waiting? Obviously, enough of the powers that be are fine with this horrific status quo or Trump would be already gone and residing in a bright orange padded cell.As for the speech itself, heeeerre’s… Donnie!
We didn’t win because of Russia, we won because of you. That I can tell you.
Well, yeah, he can and does tell his gullible, brainwashed followers anything. Thursday’s ravings of a madman was a catalog of Don The Con’s Greatest Hits and he plied those hits like a slick patent medicine salesman from the old west who just blew into town in a gold-plated covered wagon. Donnie played his big hit, “The Wall,” to big cheers, of course. He even mentioned that he was pushing a bigly new piece of legislation that would prevent new immigrants from getting welfare in their first 5 years. That also got big cheers, but, he deliberately failed to mention that such a law is already on the books.There was the standard "I won bigly-bigly over Hillary Clinton." The canard that Hillary sold uranium to Russia… You name it. His off-balance obsession with all things Hillary may be disturbing to normal people, but, not to this Republican crowd of 9,000 wackos.One wacko, Dr. Richard Paulus, could be prominently seen in his little red MAGA hat cheering, high-fiving and raising his fists at Trump’s every forked tongue word. Paulus became an Internet star among Republicans on Thursday night. Trump’s court jesters at FOX and Friends praised the enthusiasm of Dr. Paulus on Friday morning. A Republican grassroots organization called the USA Association also praised Dr. Paulus, tweeting out
LOL! This guy is all of us at a Trump rally! RT if you agree! #MAGA#WestVirginia
Dr. Paulus was recently indicted on 11 counts of fraud. Federal prosecutors say he performed medically unneeded heart procedures and then engaged in Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurance fraud. He agreed to retire and, essentially walked. His hospital employers agreed to pay over $40 million in settlement claims without admitting wrongdoing and agreeing to “internal reforms.” Sounds like Dr. Paulus will be getting a cabinet position soon, or maybe a position as a healthcare expert in the west wing.One of my favorites of Don the Con’s many false and/or misleading claims of the night was this one:
Economic growth has surged to 2.6 percent nationwide. You have to understand what that means. Nobody thought that number was going to happen.
Well, actually, sane people who know that that 2.6 number has been met in 8 of the last 18 fiscal quarters were probably pretty sure it would happen. In fact, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta had predicted a figure of 4.3, so maybe, just maybe, that 2.6 is slightly disappointing.There was plenty about Russia and Don The Con managed to combine the Russia Investigations with his obsession with the fact that his opponent got 3 million more votes from Americans than he did:
The Russia Story is a total fabrication. It’s just an excuse for the greatest loss in the history of American politics. That’s all it is… There were no Russians in our campaign. There never were.
Yeah, right. There was the usual “Repeal and Replace Obamacare” psychotic stuff that one would expect from a nut that dreams of life-saving insurance being taken away from millions. There were claims about hundreds of thousand of new manufacturing jobs coming just because of him. In reality, there have been 70,000 new manufacturing jobs since inauguration day and it would be hard to place full credit for those on any efforts that came from something done in just the last 6 months.There was also the introduction of the state’s Governor Jim Justice switching back to being a Republican after having spent a fortnight trying to masquerade as a Democrat. Could that have anything to do with his having lost a fortune in a coal business deal that’s gone bad, real bad. It seems he sold some coalmines to some, guess who… wait for it… Russians! He owes a lot of money and his state is losing a ton on the deal. Is there another deal involved? Stay tuned. This could get real interesting. Is Trump, or are “friends of Trump” part of all this? Or, is his latest party switch just the ultimate in political opportunism; opportunism that could turn around a take a big chuck out of his ass in a couple of years if things turn really rancid. Please see Howie’s post on Gov. Justice. Oh the irony of this governor’s surname!But, by far, the most popular point of the show was the point where America’s most popular circus act played his version of the Republican Party’s biggest hit. It’s so big that it’s been and will be a Republican standard for a long time. It’s at the top of their chart!
What the prosecutors should be looking at are Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails.
The crowd went nuts (Well, they obviously already were nuts.). They roared. They hooted. They stomped. They chanted their “Lock her up.” “Lock her up.” That email one is the one they all came to hear most of all. There wasn’t a dry seat in the house. That may have just been due to the humidity. It may have been due to the advanced age of most of the attendees. Hell, if you saw it on FOX like I did, it appeared that there might not have even been seats. Did the venue remove them for fear that the audience might get so frenzied that they’d tear them up? I’ve been to many shows where seats were removed as a preventative action. Such things do happen at rock concerts. And, they certainly do happen in insane asylums, even temporary, one-night-only ones.All in all, and in fairness, give Señor Trumpanzee a wee bit of credit. He left Stephen Miller back at the White House. There was no need to broadcast more white power messages on Thursday night. There’d been plenty of that direct from the White House press briefing room the day before. Besides, it was West Virginia. They’ve got that covered.It was, however, amazing that Trump didn’t regale the crowd with tales of new colonies on Mars and the moons of Jupiter that have been established under his “leadership.” That one, of course, might, only might, have been a difficult sell to a crowd that believes the moon landings were fake news.Trump goes and holds rallies in places like West Virginia because it reaffirms his demented worldview. He needs the love, the attention, and the adulation that is based on his pathological lies. God help him if he ever comes to the realization that that love he gets from people as crazy as he is based on multiple layers of delusions coming from both directions.Like I said, doing such rallies soothes his nerves. It takes him away from screaming at the TV for a few hours. He finds that needed refuge from the real world by immersing himself in his very large, yet, hopefully, shrinking cult. It is that, a cult. The Trump thing has all of the earmarks. If Charles Manson or Jim Jones had had access to TV and social media, the same kind and numbers of angry, frustrated people would be their followers; in way too many cases, right down to Manson’s lust for a race war. Not that it’s alone but West Virginia is apparently Trump’s Guyana and Spahn Ranch combined. Ideally, one night soon, Trump will hold one of his FOX “News” nationally televised rallies of the insane and, at the end, pull a Jim Jones and tell his followers to drink the cyanide laced grape juice. And, they will. Sad. These people ain’t coming back.
