TRACKING TRUMP
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Day 1284

7/27/2020

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America's Finest Hour?
STOP WORRYING IF BIDEN WILL LOSE. CELEBRATE THE CRUSADE TO STOP TRUMP

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I WAS DOING what I usually do these days, obsessing about all the things that can go wrong in the next 99 days, ending with an election night crackup for Joe Biden 3 and another catastrophic four years for us.
   You know what I’m talking about, since you probably do the same thing.
   Even alleged “good news,” like Biden’s lead in the polls, is unnerving. Take no comfort, the Worrier Class tells us: it’s way too early to trust that lead will hold up. Remember what happened to Hillary. Summer polls are a fall jinx. Polls make voters complacent. Anyway, the numbers could be wrong, since who knows if Trump supporters lie to pollsters.
   And there’s Trump’s fascination with the sewers of American life; he's forever on the lookout for fresh rivers of racism, misogyny, negativism and other pathogens to divert into the political mainstream
   “STOP!”  yelled a tiny voice. “JUST STOP RIGHT NOW!”
   I looked around, unsure where all the commotion was coming from, and I was surprised to find that it was the usually sane and steady voice of Mr. O, the “optopossumistic” opossum.
   Mr. O appeared in our backyard earlier this year, and he’s been my companion and confidant since then, at least on political matters, with our discussion usually taking place in the evenings after supper.

“Knock it off," Mr. O continued, using a phrase popularized by our home-state governor, Rhode Island’s Gina Raimondo, in her early Covid-19 briefings, when she was lecturing lunkheads defying her orders to stay six feet from one another, wear facemasks and relentlessly, repeatedly and recurrently wash their germ-encrusted filthy hands.
   Raimondo has been appearing  on lists of possible Biden vice presidential candidates, which makes us proud, although she's usually at

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the bottom of such rosters, included, we suspect, to make it seem as if pundit prophets have done their homework by lining up enough possible contenders.
   I was rather surprised by Mr. O’s angry tone. He usually avoids HYSTERICAL CAPITAL LETTERS in both his written and oral communications, mainly to avoid any comparison to Trump, but also because Mr. O prefers the peace and quiet of the shadows, where his somewhat revolting tail is less visible and his considerable  intellect shines.

"WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM?" I asked.
   "How about looking on the optimistic side of things,” Mr. O said, playing to his specialty, an overall upbeat view of life in general and not limited to politics.
   “Such as?” I said, trying not to suggest  that dogs, with our long association with Humans, know more about life and politics than do marsupials, who, by definition, are your basic outsiders.
   “Such as how about you consider that, when everyone looks back at this period, they will see it as one of the most inspiring moments in American history, about which our grandchildren will ask us over and over, begging us to tell them what it was really like,” Mr. O said.
   Mr. O and I haven’t been friends long enough for me to tell him about The Operation I had after I was rescued as a stray puppy in Missouri and that there aren’t going to be any children, much less grandchildren.
   “You mean moments like how George Washington’s troops survived that winter at Valley Forge,” I said, “or how the ‘Greatest Generation’ defeated the Nazis; or Nixon's goodbye wave from Marine One; or how Lee Iaccoca introduced the Ford Mustang, ushering in a new era of prosperity, based on new products that nobody needed, but everyone desired.”
   “Something like that,” Mr. O said.
   “But those were undeniably times with happy endings,” I said. “In this election, just like in 2016, there are no guarantees. Who knows whether the country is ready or able to face up to the damage that Trump has done, to say nothing of the horrors he’s planning.”
   “There were no guarantees in those other times, either,” Mr. O said. “The Revolutionaries could have come down with Colonial Coronavirus; Hitler could have developed the A-bomb first; and Ford could have gone on making practical, boring cars that nobody wanted and ended capitalism as we know it.”
   “We are seeing the best of democracy, and it’s been that way since Trump took office,” Mr. O said. “There are amazing, heroic, imaginative, brave people out there doing amazing, heroic and brave things.”
   I pointed out that it was time for me to go back inside the house to join the Humans and do some TV binge-watching, to that we could all get Trump out of our heads, at least for a few hours.
   “Now, Phoebe,” Mr. O said, “just hang on and hear me out.”
   I could see that the Humans were having trouble connecting to their streaming services – seems that the Internet is really strained these by so many people binge-watching TV all at the same, to get Trump out of their heads for a few hours. So I agreed to stay and hear more of what he had to say.

'CONSIDER THIS," Mr. O said. "Think how you will feel on Nov. 3 when Joe Biden wins the presidency by a landslide, the Democrats take over the Senate and they expand their lead in the House?”
   “What are you trying to do, O?,” I screamed. “You’ve just put a curse on the election. Have you no superstition, man? That’s like the baseball announcers talking about a no-hitter before the game is over. Please, stop. And lower your voice.”
“I’m serious,” he said, flicking  his scaly tail, and twitching his panda-like ears. (Mr. O’s face is stuffed-toy cute).

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   "If Trump is driven from office by the voters, they’ll be writing books and movies and folk songs, putting on plays, recording oral histories, making documentaries, all about the people who persevered during America’s darkest hours, when nothing seemed to work, when Trump and his acolytes, cronies and yes-men and yes-women, seemed unstoppable, and people were dying left and right and in the middle of Fifth Avenue from Trump’s gunshots.”
   “They’ll look back at all the good, dedicated, kind, brave people, Mr. O said. The Mothers who marched after the inauguration; the Mothers who formed the wall in Portland. The soldiers, diplomats who put their careers on the line to testify during the impeachment. The Dr. Fauci’s, who tried to literally heal the nation; the generals; the Justice Department attorneys; the over-the-hill FBI directors, the weather forecasters; the aircraft carrier skippers; the Black Lives Matter demonstrators; the political organizers; the reporters, the Never-Trumper Republicans; the ordinary people who can't sleep at night for fear of what Trump will do next; the postcard writers, the phone-bankers, the donors, the Tweeters and Facebookers, the pamphleteers, all of the people who stood up to Donald Trump.”

AND PEOPLE WILL MARVEL at their dedication, and how, even when they seemed to be losing, they kept on fighting for America and democracy and for all of the good things that a free country can do. And they will say: ‘This was America at its very best.’”
    “Not to throw a little cold water your way,” I said to Mr. O, “But what if Trump wins? Will it still have been America’s finest hour? Will the best and brightest of America still have risen to the challenge? Will this still have been a time in our history like few others?”
   “Of course,” Mr. O said. “It's just that nobody will write any books about it.”

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DAY 1264

7/7/2020

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part 2
  IS TRUMP A PSYCHOPATH?

Concluding our analysis of Trump on a checklist of 20 unflattering personality traits.
And what this tells us about the 45th president

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TRUMP at the House House in 2018. CREDIT: The White House, Joyce Boghosian
WE CONTINUE our pseudo-medical analysis of Donald Trump, using the "Hare Psychopathy Checklist," which assigns a score to 20 various personality traits. Yesterday, we went through the first 10. Today, we do the rest, and arrive at a total score.

#11 - promiscuous sexual behavior

OH, LORDY, to paraphrase James Comey, where to start?
   Let’s got with the infamous 2005 Hollywood Access tape obtained by the Washington Post shortly before Trump’s election. On the set of a TV show, Trump bragged to host Billy Bush about his past treatment of women, unaware that the conversation was being recorded as they were about to meet an actress.
TRUMP: I moved on her, actually. You know, she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it.
UNKNOWN VOICE: Whoa.
TRUMP: I did try and fuck her. She was married.
UNKNOWN VOICE: That’s huge news.
TRUMP: No, no, Nancy. No, this was [unintelligible] — and I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping.
   She wanted to get some furniture. I said, “I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.” I took her out furniture — I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there.
   And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.
BUSH: Sheesh, your girl’s hot as shit. In the purple.
TRUMP: Whoa! Whoa!
BUSH: Yes! The Donald has scored. Whoa, my man!
 [Crosstalk]
TRUMP: Look at you, you are a pussy.
[Crosstalk]
TRUMP: All right, you and I will walk out. Maybe it’s a different one.
BUSH: It better not be the publicist. No, it’s, it’s her, it’s --
TRUMP: I better use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.
BUSH: Whatever you want.
TRUMP: Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

   Soon after the Post’s bombshell, CNN got hold of a 2005 taped interview with radio’s Howard Stern, in which Trump described the privileges of a beauty pageant owner.
I’ll tell you the funniest is that I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed. No men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in, because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it…. “Is everyone OK?” You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. “‘Is everybody OK?” And you see these incredible looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that.”
SCORE: 2

#12 – Early behavioral problems

IN THEIR 2016 book, Trump Revealed, Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, Washington Post reporters, describe recollections of people who grew up with Trump.
   Dennis Burnham, a Texas business consultant, said his mother wouldn’t let him play with Trump because he was “known to be a bully.” Dennis’ mother left her son in a backyard playpen briefly, then discovered Donald throwing rocks at her son.
   Another contemporary, Steve Nachtigall, said that he saw Donald and some of his friends jump off their bikes and beat up another boy. Said Nachtigall, a doctor: “He was a loudmouth bully.”
   Mr. O and I debated whether these accounts, plausible as they are, add up to a conclusion of chronic bad behavior. So, we gave Trump an undeserved break, rating it “Applies somewhat.”

SCORE: 1
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MR. O
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PHOEBE

#13 – Lack of realistic, long-term goals

WHILE TRUMP'S 2016 campaign outlined a depraved set of goals, and unfortunately, he’s followed through – starting to build the “wall” on the Mexican border, canceling climate change and Iranian nuclear agreements, and appointing mean-spirited Supreme Court justices.
   But many observers fault him for lacking long-term policy goals or having a second-term agenda.
   Trump’s answer to a June 25 question in a Fox TV interview drew many comments, and was described this way by Snopes, the fact-checking website:

When (Sean) Hannity, one of the most pro-Trump broadcasters in the U.S. news media, asked the president the softball question of “What are your top priority items for a second term?” Trump did not articulate a single second-term goal of his.
 SCORE: 2

#14 – Impulsivity

FAREED ZAKARIA, in a Washington Post column on Jan. 9, listed Trump’s many impulsive foreign policy actions: threatening North Korea’s “Rocketman,” dictator, then cozying up to Kim Jong-; threatening Iran with an attack, then calling it off; withdrawing troops from Syria, but sending forces to Saudi Arabia. He wrote:
Trump does not have a foreign policy. He has a series of impulses — isolationism, unilateralism, bellicosity — some of them contradictory. One might surge at any particular moment, triggered usually by Trump’s sense that he might look weak or foolish. They are often unleashed without any consultation, and then his yes men line up to defend him, supporting the president’s every move with North Korean-style enthusiasm, no matter how incoherent.
   See also Items #3, #8, #10 and #11.
SCORE: 2

#15 – Irresponsibility

IT'S A TRUMP hallmark.
   Recent examples of irresponsibility include his failure to protect American troops after Russian offered bounties to fighters who kill them. But Trump’s willful bungling of the Covid-19 pandemic has imperiled millions of Americans.
   The delays in responding to the threat lost crucial time and may have contributed to some of the more than 130,000 deaths so far. As the administration failed to devise a national strategy, leaving states to develop their own, often conflicting policies, Trump endorsed unproven treatments, and famously mused publicly about injecting people with sunlight and disinfectant.
   There’s Trump’s refusal to wear a facemask, and his contempt for people who do. Let’s return to the briefing room, on April 3.

I’m feeling good. I just don’t want to be doing, somehow sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful Resolute Desk, the great Resolute Desk, I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don’t know, somehow, I don’t see it for myself. I just don’t. Maybe I’ll change my mind. This will pass. Hopefully it will pass very quickly.  
SCORE: 2

#16 – Failure to accept responsibility for one’s own actions

MR. O POINTS OUT that this is almost the same issue raised in #15.
   Trump answered this question on March 13, when a reporter asked whether he felt any responsibility for the lag in Covid-19 testing.

No, I don’t take responsibility at all.
SCORE: 2

#17 – Many short-term marital relationships

HE'S BEEN MARRIED three times. Whether that’s “many,” and whether they are “short-term,” are subjective judgments. His 1977 marriage to Ivana Zelní?ková ended in divorce in 1992 – about 15 years;  Marla Maples, 1993 to 1999, about six years. He married the former Melania Knauss in 2005, so this one is at the 15-year mark and counting.
   We note a recent book, The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump, by Mary Jordan, a Washington Post reporter. She wrote that Mrs. Trump initially declined to move to Washington from New York City when Trump took office, because she wanted to strengthen her bargaining hand in rewriting their prenuptial agreement.  
   Mr. O and I agree there’s too much subjectivity in trying to rate this one.

SCORE: 0

# 18 – Juvenile delinquency

TRUMP is often juvenile and always a delinquent.
   But as far as we know, Trump doesn’t have an official juvie record.

SCORE: 0

#19 – Revocation of conditional release (from prison)

Sadly, no.
SCORE: 0

#20 – Criminal versatility (i.e., commits diverse types of crimes)

FORTUNATELY, the category doesn’t say someone has been convicted of a crime, only that he’s committed one. Let us count the ways:
  • Impeachment. Sure, the Senate voted not to convict on Feb. 5. But the House did impeach Trump, charging him with the Constitutional sins of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” namely that Trump abused his powers by trying to shake down the president of Ukraine, threatening to withhold military aid, unless Ukraine investigated Joe Biden, Trump’s likely election opponent; and  that he obstructed Congress’ impeachment inquiry.
  • Mueller Report. Former FBI chief Robert Mueller pulled his punches in March, 2019 by not formally charging or explicitly linking Trump to colluding with Russia in the 2016 election. But his report is devastating, both in detailing the Trump campaign’s willingness to accept Russia’s help, and a damning assessment as to whether Trump obstructed the investigation: “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
  • Tax fraud. Trump has refused to release his recent income tax returns, and the dog and opossum agree he’s got something to hide. The previously mentioned New York Times investigation into Trump family’s shenanigans:
   President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents, an investigation by The New York Times has found.
   … Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his sibling
s.

  • Sex crimes. Seventeen women have accused Trump of abuses, ranging from forced kisses (7); reaching up their skirts (3); grabbing their buttocks (4); leering at naked beauty contestants (2); and rape (1).
We note the seriousness of the allegations, especially the accusation by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in her book, What Do We Need Men For? An excerpt was printed in New York magazine June 21, 2019. She wrote that Trump asked her to help him buy a gift, and that he assaulted her in the dressing room of a department store.
The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.
   There’s more.
   The so-called “emoluments” allegations, whether Trump violated the Constitution’s ban on gifts, because foreigners seeking Trump’s favor stayed at his Washington hotel; Trump’s pardoning of a convicted war criminal; Attorney General William P. Barr’s corrupt meddling on Trump’s behalf, moving to withdraw the prosecution of former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who’d already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI; and Barr’s removal of a U.S. attorney whose office was investigating former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer.

   The list is so long.
SCORE: 2
OKAY, we’re done.
   Here’s our chart, and the final score.

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WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
   According to the Psychology Today website, 30 points and more indicate a bona fide psychopath, so Trump is admitted yet another exclusive club with 33 points.
  But Trump may be disappointed to learn that he’s six points behind serial killer Ted Bundy, who scored 39.
   Trump shouldn’t fret, though. He’s probably far ahead in actual deaths.
  • Deaths, never to be counted, of asylum seekers and other would-be immigrants denied entry into the U.S.
  • Deaths of Covid-19 victims who might have lived with a responsible U.S. campaign against the pandemic.
  • Deaths of people denied medical care, housing and food because of Trump policies.
  • Deaths because of rollbacks in air and water quality.
  • Deaths of U.S. soldiers who may have died in Afghanistan because Trump ignored Russian bounties.
  • Death of the planet, if Trump’s policies mean it’s now too late to reverse climate change.
   That’s the problem in trying to write off Trump as merely “crazy.”
   Even if Trump truly is a psychopath - Merriam-Webster's definition is "a person having an egocentric and antisocial personality marked by a lack of remorse for one's actions, an absence of empathy for others, and often criminal tendencies" - that doesn’t get us very far.
    It doesn't help us understand his cruelty, racism, incompetence, viciousness and divisiveness that, combined with the enormous powers of a president, make him such a destructive and frightening force.
   Still, we’ve found this exercise useful in one way: it’s allowed us to pull together a few of Trump’s many bad deeds and dangerous qualities. It’s hard to keep all of them in mind in the turmoil of continuous bad news that Trump generates daily.
   So, maybe this helps remind us that the score that matters will be the electoral college’s tally after the Nov. 3 election.
   What’s really scary? There’s only 119 days to go.

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DAY 1263

7/6/2020

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IS TRUMP A PSYCHOPATH?

Rating Donald Trump on a list of 20 unflattering personality traits.
And what it tells us about the 45th president.

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TRUMP in Prescott, Arizona, October, 2016. CREDIT: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons license
PictureMR. O
WE LOATHE Donald Trump, but we think it’s wrong to label him “crazy.”
   For one thing, that lets him off the hook; he’s evil, regardless of whether he’s ill. And it’s unfair to group him with people who have genuine mental health problems.
   But as we were looking for the one word in the English language that perfectly describes the 45th president – rogue, scumbag, fiend, killer, bounder, etc. – we came across sociopath, which, in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, led us to psychopath.
   What intrigued us was the simple, you-can-do-this-at-home way to identify a psychopath: a list of 20 personality traits – none of them flattering – that lets you know if someone is indeed a bad dude.
   Of course, it’s not an original idea to use pseudo-medicine to explain Trump. Books have been written by professionals, and Trump antagonist George Conway covered the topic in The Atlantic magazine last October.
   But ours may be the first such analysis by a dog and an opossum.
   I should explain about the “we.” I’ve been chatting with Mr. O – the optomistic opossum, who appeared in our yard earlier this year, long enough to be photographed by the Humans, who think he disappeared.
   But he's still around, and he and I talk politics almost every evening. At some point, we ran across Psychology Today magazine’s website and found the “Hare Psychopathy Checklist.” We were excited to see it was created by a fellow backyard citizen, one with floppy ears. But later, we learned it was developed by a Canadian researcher, Robert Hare – our lesson here being that to Hare is Human.
   Anyway, Psychology Today warns that “A true assessment should be conducted by a mental health professional.”
  
RIGHT. So, if you want to try this at home, here’s the list. (Scoring:  0 - Doesn’t apply; 1 – Applies somewhat; 2 - Fully applies)
  #1- Glibness/superficial charm
  #2 - Grandiose sense of self-worth
  #3 - Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
  #4 - Pathological lying
  #5 - Conning/manipulative
  #6 - Lack of remorse or guilt
  #7 - Shallow affect (i.e., reduced emotional responses)
  #8 - Callous/lack of empathy
  #9 - Parasitic lifestyle
  #10 - Poor behavioral controls
  #11 - Promiscuous sexual behavior


#12 - Early behavioral problems
  #13 - Lack of realistic, long-term goals
  #14 - Impulsivity
  #15 - Irresponsibility
  #16 - Failure to accept responsibility for one's own actions
  #17 - Many short-term marital relationships
  #18 - Juvenile delinquency
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PHOEBE
  #19 - Revocation of conditional release (from prison)
  #20- Criminal versatility (i.e., commits diverse types of crimes)

OKAY. Let's get started, with the first character trait.

#1 – Glibness/ superficial charm

WHERE TO START? Of course, Twitter, on Jan. 6, 2018 at 8:27 a.m.:
Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star..... to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!
SCORE: 2

#2 – Grandiose sense of self-worth

WE COULD could have written: “See Item #1.”
   But that’s the lazy way. Here’s something we found in Trump’s acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention, July 31, 2016:

Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.
SCORE: 2

#3 – Need for Stimulation/ proneness to boredom

WE AGAIN went right to the source, in this case, one of “his” books, published in 1990, Surviving at the Top.
I get bored too easily. My attention span is short.
GIVEN THAT that it’s unlikely that Trump has written any of “his” books, we’ll add an assessment of an outside source, this one by a ghostwriter who authored Trump’s 1987 book: Trump: The Art of the Deal, Tony Schwartz. He was interviewed by the New Yorker magazine’s Jane Mayer in 2016. Trump is so unfocused, Schwartz told her, that when he tried to interview him, Trump couldn’t go the distance, even though it was about Trump’s favorite topic. Mayer wrote:
Schwartz “…asked Trump to describe his childhood in detail. After sitting for only a few minutes in his suit and tie, Trump became impatient and irritable. He looked fidgety, Schwartz recalls, “like a kindergartner who can’t sit still in a classroom.” Even when Schwartz pressed him, Trump seemed to remember almost nothing of his youth, and made it clear that he was bored. Far more quickly than Schwartz had expected, Trump ended the meeting.
SCORE: 2

#4 – Pathological lying

MR. O AND I objected to Hare’s use of the word “pathological,” because the Checklist is supposed to define whether someone is “pathological,” so you shouldn’t use the word as part of the assessment itself.  “Serial,” “committed,” “total,” “shocking,” or some other, more neutral adjective to go with “liar” is what's needed.
   This is pathetically easy to answer. The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” has been keeping count since Trump’s inauguration. In June the Post wrote:

As of May 29, his 1,226th day in office, Trump had made 19,127 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement he has uttered. That’s almost 16 claims a day over the course of his presidency. So far this year, he’s averaging just over 22 claims a day, similar to the pace he set in 2019.
   One example. The Post says one of Trump’s most repeated lies, told 206 times, is that even before it was enacted, the Republican tax cut of 2017 would be the largest in history, more than a 1981 measure during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
Reagan’s tax cut amounted to 2.9 percent of the gross domestic product and none of the proposals under consideration came close to that level. Yet Trump persisted in this fiction even when the tax cut was eventually crafted to be the equivalent of 0.9 percent of GDP, making it the eighth largest tax cut in 100 years.
SCORE: 2

#5 – Conning/ manipulative

“CONNING?” That confused us, too. We thought it was a misprint of “cunning.” But on second thought, “cunning” gives the Trump brain too much credit. It’s more appropriately a derivative of “con,” as in con man, con artist. In her New Yorker article, Jane Mayer cites a 1991 book by Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and the Downfall, that described the kind of flimflam in which Trump specializes, in this case, a 1975 development of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York:
Trump snookered rivals into believing that he had an exclusive option from the city on the project, when he didn’t. Trump also deceived his partner in the deal, Jay Pritzker, the head of the Hyatt Hotel chain. Pritzker had rejected an unfavorable term proposed by Trump, but at the closing Trump forced it through, knowing that Pritzker was on a mountain in Nepal and could not be reached.
SCORE: 2

#6 – Lack of remorse or guilt

PictureAT MOUNT RUSHMORE, July 3, 2020. where Trump staged a rally, ignoring Covid-19, fire dangers. CREDIT: Associated Press
IF YOU'RE current on the news, Trump’s July 3 appearance at Mount Rushmore is typical.   
  Setting aside Trump’s racist and provocateur’s rant, he certainly showed no guilt in convening a Covid-19 super-spreader event, in which attendees were too close together, most not wearing masks; in arranging a fireworks display when the landscape was at risk of wildfires; in placing himself among four truly monumental presidents carved into the mountain; in ignoring the objections of Native Americans whose land is both scared and stolen.

SCORE: 2

#7 – Shallow affect (I.E., reduced emotional responses)

SO MANY examples. Mr. O suggested the classic:  Trump’s phone call to the family of George Floyd, whose video-recorded death as a Minneapolis policeman pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck, resulting in historic national demonstrations protesting the nation’s long mistreatment of Black citizens. Philonise Floyd, George’s brother, described the presidential call to MSNBC’s Al Sharpton on May 20:
It was so fast. He didn't give me the opportunity to even speak. It was hard. I was trying to talk to him, but he just kept like pushing me off like, “I don’t want to hear what you’re talking about.” I just told him I want justice.
SCORE: 2

#8 – Callous/ lack of empathy

LET'S GO to the Covid-19 briefing room on March 20, when NBC’s Peter Alexander, asked Trump a softball question:
ALEXANDER: “What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now and are scared?”
TRUMP: I’d say that you’re a terrible reporter, that’s what I’d say. … I think it’s a very nasty question, and I think it’s a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people … “The American people are looking for answers, and they’re looking for hope. And you’re doing sensationalism. And the same with NBC and Concast — I don’t call it Comcast, I call it Concast…You should be ashamed of yourself.
SCORE: 2

#9 – Parasitic lifestyle

MR. O AND I had to scratch our heads on this one, but soon discovered that Trump’s history is well documented. We return to Joan Mayer’s New Yorker article, where she quotes Wayne Barrett, the author the book about Trump’s shady business deals, debunking Trump’s claim that he was a self-made businessman. Mayer wrote:
… he found that Trump’s father was instrumental in his son’s rise, financially and politically. In the book (Art of the Deal), Trump says that “my energy and my enthusiasm” explain how, as a twenty-nine-year-old with few accomplishments, he acquired the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Barrett reports, however, that Trump’s father had to co-sign the many contracts that the deal required. He also lent Trump seven and a half million dollars to get started as a casino owner in Atlantic City; at one point, when Trump couldn’t meet payments on other loans, his father tried to tide him over by sending a lawyer to buy some three million dollars’ worth of gambling chips.
   Similarly, the New York Times, in its Pulitzer Prize-winning articles about the Trump family’s tax scams, wrote on Oct. 2, 2018: 
Mr. Trump won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help.
  But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.

SCORE: 2

#10 – Poor behavioral controls

POLITICO has been one of many news outlets commenting on Trump’s lack of discipline. On Oct. 29, 2018, the news website reported it had a week’s worth of Trump’s White House schedules, which showed that up to nine hours a day was spent as “Executive Time,” compared to three hours doing actual presidential work.
What is unclear is how much thinking and working actually takes places in these off-hours, despite the protestations of some Trump aides — as opposed to tweeting, television-watching, gossiping and venting with friends and allies by telephone.
Politico quoted Yuval Levin, a policy aide to former President George W. Bush:
… the lack of structure yields a lack of orderly decision-making and discipline that can be a huge problem given the demands of the job. 'Executive’ is the last thing I would call unstructured time.
SCORE: 2
OKAY. That’s enough for now.
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    A "sweet dog" confronts the catastrophe of the Trump presidency

    The Tracker

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    PHOEBE might have remained a “sweet” and apolitical dog but for the Trump crisis. Now, like millions of Americans, she wrestles daily with the challenge of what to do about it. With no illusions about the impact, she founded and is the principal writer of the Tracking Trump  blog.

    In Memoriam

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    CAT, a cat and Libertarian was Phoebe's co-author. He died Nov. 14, 2019. His self-described role was to leaven Phoebe’s naiveté and idealism with “common sense." He is remembered and missed.

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