Trump Is F*cking Crazy (This Is Not a Joke)

by Keith Olbermann

  Crazy—another good placeholder.

  The point is that only in the past couple of weeks has much of the media-political complex in this country been willing to even hint at what has been perfectly obvious to many of the rest of us: Donald Trump is not well. “Trump has two complaints about Cabinet members,” wrote Mike Allen of Axios. “Either they’re tooting their own horns too much, or they’re insufficiently effusive in praising him as a brilliant diplomat, etc. . . .” “White House and former campaign aides,” reported Politico, “have tried to make sure Trump’s media diet includes regular doses of praise and positive stories to keep his mood up—a tactic honed by staff during the campaign to keep him from tweeting angrily.” So occasionally his staff prints fake Time magazine covers off the internet, or articles torpedoing each other, to give to Trump. This crazy stuff originates from inside Trump’s White House.

  Donald Trump is not well.

  As a whole, the country has appeared to be unwilling to address this, even as a possibility. It’s understandable. We have gradually grown as a society to understand the nature of mental illness—physically based or otherwise. Even in my childhood, this was a subject of fear and confusion and blame, and now, finally, we are sympathetic. But for fifty years, we have asked our mental health professionals not to diagnose our presidential candidates from afar. Unfortunately, this is like saying that you can’t call it a forest fire unless you work for the National Park Service, at the specific forest, and you’ve been personally singed by the fire.

  Our refusal, out of sympathy and fairness, to call “some kind of paranoid delusion” “some kind of paranoid delusion” could destroy this country. The last Quinnipiac poll asked recipients to give a description of Trump, using the first word that came into their heads. Not multiple choice, just “give me the word that best describes him.”

  Forty-six different words were given five times or more. The leaders were idiot, incompetent, liar, leader, unqualified, president, strong, businessman, ignorant, and egotistical. Asshole just missed the top ten, tied with stupid. Arrogant, trying (excellent, thoughtful word there, “trying”), bully, business, narcissist, successful, disgusting, great, clown, dishonest, racist, American, bigot, good, money, smart, buffoon, con-man, crazy, different, disaster, rich, despicable, dictator, aggressive, blowhard, decisive, embarrassment, evil, greedy, inexperienced, mental, negotiator, patriotism. Only three words that even hint at psychiatric issues: crazy, mental, and narcissist. Used just a combined 23 times from a total of 527 people.

  Trump’s aides spend forty-eight hours violently insisting that Comey’s firing had nothing to do with Russia; he gives an interview and says of course he was thinking about Russia, destroying the argument, and the aides. He hints at a secret taping system in the White House—something even Richard Nixon hid for more than four years. He uses the phrase “priming the pump” about the economy and claims he just made it up, and he asks the interviewer “Do you like it?” even though there’s documentary evidence that “prime the pump” has been used to describe government action to energize an economy since at least 1933, and he thinks he just coined it last week!

  But nobody will call him crazy.

  That one little quote from The Washington Post might be a harbinger of increased belief among his supporters that Trump is dangerously unstable. “One GOP figure close to the White House mused privately about whether Trump was ‘in the grip of some kind of paranoid delusion.’” But they can’t admit that. If you supported a candidate, and he was elected president, and it turned out you were wrong and all your opponents were right and he was crazy—would you admit it?

  Nevertheless, it might be leaking out over the sides. In the Quinnipiac poll on February 7, 88 percent of Republicans said they approved Trump, and 75 percent said they strongly approved Trump. In the Quinnipiac poll on May 10, 82 percent of Republicans said they approved Trump, but only 63 percent still said they strongly approved Trump. Same thing in an NBC poll: 90 percent Republican approval on February 5, 67 percent strong approval; 88 percent Republican approval on May 11—virtually no change—but just 54 percent strong approval. Two polls in which, in three months, about 20 percent of Trump’s Republican support has sunk from strong approval to just approval.

  Maybe the Trump “thing”—his mental health, the chaos of his administration, Russia, whatever—is slowly creeping into the awareness even of the Republicans. They had better figure it out fast, because there is also something new—and I don’t think this has been reported anywhere else—that suggests what happens when you don’t act quickly to check the Trump effect. Until I sold last year, I lived in Trump Palace. Well, “fled” is a better word than “sold.” I took a 10 percent loss to get out, and weeks after I sold last July, the buyer put it back on the market, and he’s finally been able to find a buyer, and he has lost 5 percent.

  And this is nothing less than a letter from the owner of the Grand Penthouse, the one at the top, who has been trying to sell for two years. According to the real estate listing, Laurence Weiss has cut his price at Trump Palace by 35 percent, and he has written to his fellow condo owners in the building: “Several realtors say that part of the problem is the Trump name on the building. Just this week a potential buyer dropped out when their teenage daughter refused to live in a Trump building . . . This problem is real and will not go away any time soon. We, the owners, can change the name if 2/3 of us agree . . . Our homes are worth more without the Trump name . . .”

  The Grand Penthouse owner is putting his money where Trump’s mouth is. “Since I perceive a direct financial benefit from a name change I am prepared to underwrite the costs of a name change disproportionately. Specifically, I am prepared to spend 10% of the cost of signage changes . . .” He is willing to pay his neighbors to help him take Trump’s name off the building. If there isn’t a metaphor in that for this country, I don’t know my metaphors:

  A 10 percent Trump loss, then a 5 percent Trump loss, then a 35 percent Trump loss, then I’ll pay you to get rid of his name.

  Or, to go back to The Washington Post: “One GOP figure close to the White House mused privately about whether Trump was ‘in the grip of some kind of paranoid delusion.’”

  THE TAPE

  Post date • TUESDAY, MAY 23

  Barring the unforeseen, Donald Trump is finished.

  The unforeseen? Like: some imaginary or inflated threat. National calamity. Terrorism. War. Or another impossible long shot—Trump telling the truth. Otherwise: Something has happened, the finality of which few have noted, that will end—sooner or later—the Trump presidency. It happened in two stages, and when the second stage hit, the smarter Republicans began to at least look to see where the exits were, and some, like Jason Chaffetz and Paul Ryan and Ben Sasse and Mike Pence, edged imperceptibly toward them.

  It’s the threat he made against James Comey. About a tape.

  Combined with the revelation from one of Comey’s associates. About a memo.

  There are only so many ways out for Trump, and only one of them is good, and the others are all proof of lies and impeachable offenses, and the chances that the good one is real are about one in a billion. This registered with Brian Beutler of The New Republic, and I’m indebted to what he wrote on this, because he saw it and I did not. And amid the tsunami of Trump stories in the past week, it was easy to miss. Remember the tweet: “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

  So Comey reportedly has a series of memos of the conversations, which would document his version of his conversations with Trump. Presumably noting, in real time, Trump asking Comey to discontinue the Michael Flynn investigation (a potential violation of the so-called “Take Care” provision of the Constitution, article 2 section 3), asking Comey to be loyal to him first and, by extension, to the Constitution second (violation of the presidential oath of office), asking Comey when
the FBI was going to announce it wasn’t investigating him about Russia (potential obstruction of justice, violations of the White House/Justice Department contacts policy), and Lord knows what else.

  It is a one-witness impeachment trial waiting to happen. Either Comey is lying and lying and lying, or Trump’s presidency is already over and we just don’t know whether the Republicans will bury it soon, in hopes of recovering by the midterms, or they will wait for the possibility Democrats will get to do it early in 2019. Comey has that and all that that implies.

  And Trump has a tape—maybe.

  Option one: Trump’s only hope is that his schoolyard-bully tweet means there is a tape. And it had better be a tape on which every reference to Michael Flynn and Russia and loyalty and the FBI and Comey and his claim that Comey exonerated him—it had better be a tape on which every reference to every single thing is as Trump has publicly claimed it is, and not as Comey has reportedly written it is. Trump can’t be wrong once.

  If he’s wrong once and Comey is right once, that brings us option two: one article of impeachment. All you need is one. Ultimately, all that those thousands of hours of Watergate tapes needed to show was Nixon, on June 23, 1972, plotting to stop the FBI investigation of the break-in. Just as all this scandal would need would be, say, Trump talking to Comey about the Flynn case and asking him to “let this go.” That’s if there are tapes and if they produce only one pro-Comey fact. And if it’s more than one? All of them?

  That’s option three: Given not just Trump’s hundreds of lies just since assuming office, but his seeming complete disinterest in and unawareness of the difference between lying and telling the truth, the safe guess is that Trump has no idea what would be on the tapes, if they exist, and they are likely to prove him repeatedly violating the law and vindicating Comey, in which case it’s not just impeachment, as in option two, but it would then suggest other impeachable acts and several articles.

  Of course, it can still get worse—in option four: There are tapes, but Trump refuses to let anybody listen to them, claiming executive privilege or personal property or whatever he comes up with. At which point he would presumably be in violation of subpoenas from the Justice Department and maybe both houses of Congress, and a very public legal case goes up to the Supreme Court, which heard this exact story forty-odd years ago and voted unanimously against the president.

  So he’s humiliated and he still has to go back to face option two or option three.

  And still it can get worse, as in option five: Trump claims there were tapes, but he has destroyed them to protect executive privilege and national security. Don’t laugh—several advisers told Nixon to destroy his tapes. His former treasury secretary, John Connally, said he should do it in the Rose Garden with the press looking on. Apart from the fury from Capitol Hill, destroying the tapes might deplete much of his political support. If Comey’s memos accuse Trump of impeachable offenses, and Trump has tapes that he claims clear him, and he destroys those vindicating tapes—how many of even Trump’s voters and, more important, his supporters in Congress, would see the ultimate stupidity of that? You threatened him with the tapes; he’s lying about you; so you destroyed the tapes?

  And still it can get worse. Option six: For whatever reason—desperate, last-chance self-protection, or finally listening to better advice, or thinking he can win the world back to his side—Trump announces that there are no tapes and there were no tapes. He now might be guilty of fabricating evidence to aid obstruction of justice. Worse yet, he would have to admit that something he implied . . . was not true. So far Trump has been asked only once about the purported Comey tape, in a Fox interview, and he adamantly refused to comment: “That I can’t talk about,” he said. “I won’t talk about that.” But to have to talk about it? To have to concede that what he has said previously was not entirely correct? Never mind not true—not correct? He’s Trump—when was the last time he admitted that he was not correct? The admission alone might destroy him from within.

  And still, there is one last outcome that is worse than all the others. Option seven: Trump for once does the smart thing and comes down from his self-decorated cross of being the most unfairly treated politician in the history of the galaxy and he backs down from his threat and puts his tail between his legs and reveals, quietly or loudly, that there are no tapes—and then somebody else in the administration, some operations guy at the White House who is under oath and who really doesn’t want to go to jail for perjury to protect Trump, testifies somewhere that, no, there are tapes of Trump and Comey, and not just Trump and Comey, but Trump and everybody else from whom he asked loyalty, and everybody he asked to interfere with this investigation or to help him get dirt on this person he fired, and tapes of Trump and the Russians last week, and on and on and on. After all, we didn’t find out about the Nixon tapes from Nixon. We found out about them because a Republican attorney asked a White House operations guy named Alexander Butterfield. Nixon had never been asked if he was taping everybody who came through his office door. Come to think of it, Trump has yet to be asked if he is taping everybody who comes through his office door.

  But that’s because we don’t have to ask—we have that stupid tweet he stupidly sent to stupidly threaten Comey to stupidly make himself feel better—and until and unless Trump can prove the tapes vindicate him, or until and unless Trump can prove the tapes don’t exist and never have existed, the Republicans in Congress have to assume that there are tapes, and if tapes could destroy Nixon two years after he won forty-nine out of fifty states, they sure as hell can destroy Trump and take half of the Republicans seeking reelection next year with him!

  It was hours after the New York Times story about the Comey memo that Jason Chaffetz tweeted that he was ready to subpoena it, and only hours more until the chair of the House Republican Conference endorsed that, and only hours until Speaker Ryan said he was fine with that, and only hours more until the appointment of Robert Mueller as the Justice Department’s special counsel on Trump and Russia, and only hours after that that Fox couldn’t find any Republican congressmen to come on and defend Trump, and only hours after that that Mike Pence filed the paperwork with the Federal Election Commission for his own PAC, because, sure, it doesn’t look bad that, not four months into a new administration, with the president already running for reelection, the vice president is launching a separate PAC!

  The Republicans are not fleeing, and the room is not yet on fire. But if you think all of what we have seen them do since Trump decided to threaten, with secret intelligence and hidden recording devices, a man who is in the secret-intelligence-and-hidden-recording-devices business . . . it all becomes clear.

  At 8:26 a.m. on May 12, Trump hit “send.” In terms of his presidency, he might as well have hit “delete.” And, like us, the Republicans now know it is no longer a question of if, but of “Donald Trump better hope that there are no ‘memos’ of our conversations before he starts threatening.” . . . Oh, right, there are!

  WHEN WILL RUSSIA “BREAK”?

  Post date • WEDNESDAY, MAY 24

  So when will the Trump-Russia story break?

  When will we know, when will we hear—when, already?! Indictments? Impeachments? Confessions? Trumps fleeing to Elba? I am actually asked these questions even more than I ask them myself. And it has recently occurred to me that, while the Trump-Russia story might indeed be the proverbial iceberg that is 90 percent underwater, what we now see is still immense. There are the gigantic headlines everybody knows: Trump boastfully giving the Russians Israel’s classified intelligence about ISIS; Trump boasting to them that he had “relieved the pressure” by firing James Comey; the Washington Post report that the Trump-Russia investigation has now reached somebody actively serving in the White House; Michael Flynn’s attorney saying his client would take the Fifth in front of the Senate.

  But we also know so much more. We know that the fired head of the FBI testified to t
he House Intelligence Committee that it is investigating, and that it is not investigating if there are links between the Trump campaign and the Russians, but rather it is “investigating the nature of any links” and “whether there was any coordination.” We know that James Comey testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Bureau is coordinating with “two sets of prosecutors: Main Justice, the National Security Division, and the Eastern District of Virginia U.S. Attorney’s Office,” and that there’s reason to believe that this coordination means a U.S. Attorney’s Office might already have a grand jury sitting about the Trump campaign and Russia. According to CNN, we know that a grand jury sitting in that district issued subpoenas to associates of General Michael Flynn for business records. We know that two non-mainstream observers, first Claude Taylor and then the former intel officer John Schindler, said the number of FBI targets in its Trump-Russia probe ranges from about twenty-eight to about forty-two, when Watergate resulted in forty Nixon administration figures or associates jailed or indicted.

  We know that Carl Bernstein reported on CNN that the FBI and the Senate and House investigators believe there is an “active cover-up” of Trump and Russia being run by the White House, and that at least the FBI also believes its work is being “impeded” by All the Trump’s Men.

  We know that Acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned the White House about National Security Adviser Flynn’s vulnerability to Russian blackmail, and the next day Trump reportedly asked James Comey whether or not he was under investigation about Russia, and he reportedly asked for Comey’s loyalty. We know that Trump promptly fired Yates, and then tweeted about her in such a way that led some to think he may have broken a federal law against witness intimidation.