CHICKEN LITTLE, “THE SKY IS FALLING!”

Trump’s Terribly Fake Economy is Melting Away

Before the 2016 election, when asked why I didn’t support Donald Trump I would simply smile and calmly say that I lived in New York and I knew Trump. That changed when it looked like he had a serious shot at running for President, Then I just blurted out, “I have never liked him.” To me, his P.T. Barnum routine was inauthentic. When loyalists said that he will help the stock market, get rid of regulations and make us all rich, I never believed it. He is a con man to me and a phony, blowhard, maniacal racist with no concrete facts to support his plans and policies. And by the way, he is still playing with other people’s money, our money.

I am not here to convince you that those people who questioned me were wrong. My blog is the way I release all the steam from the pressurized, overheated, three-pound mass of tissue in my skull. That’s where my logic lives. There is no proof that Trump’s get-even politics and retribution economic policies have made America better or the world economy more stable. He doesn’t understand how trade works and the real effects of tariffs and sanctions. Believing people like Peter Navarro has hurt us, badly.

Let me break it down. Trump is not helping the citizens of this country. His dog-and-pony shows are wasting valuable time needed to solve our country’s coronavirus crisis. The Trump administration has totally disconnected from Congress and it’s 100% the Donald’s fault. The displays of adulation by his sycophants during nationally televised hearings show they care only about how they look, as well. They’re baby Trumps.

The reason why Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin goes to Capitol Hill to motivate Congress in moving on relief packages for the American people is because those in power neither LIKE nor TRUST Donald Trump. Think about it. In what previous administration have you seen the leader of the Treasury being involved with foreign relations, domestic policy and moving bills through congress? According to John Bolton’s book In The Room Where It Happened, Steve Mnuchin kept good things from happening and advanced bad ideas. He has too much power in the administration.

The first Treasury Secretary was Alexander Hamilton, but I’ll wager you can’t name the most previous three. Mnuchin’s work comes about because we have a lazy, ineffectual President. HEY TRUMP, Joe Voter doesn’t live or die with the stock market like you do. They just want you to become a leader with a solid plan to end the damn virus so they can get back to work. STOP PLAYING GAMES, Mr. President. Your lies are crashing into one another.

The health of average Americans is in risk solely because of massive amounts of stupidity from Trump. When he told everyone that he would not be wearing a mask, he should have pulled out a white flag, waved it above his fake, comb-over hair and declared the virus the winner. TRUMP LOST. He was more concerned with the way a damn mask made him look than giving us good advice. What’s the net result of his inept leadership? MORE DEATH!

After months of denial, Trump got serious about the virus and masks for one day, then he darted off into conspiracies and bad advice. WHY? Does he really want to kill people? Why doesn’t someone ask him that? He’s a pathological liar, a sociopath and suffering from an industrial-strength version of narcissistic personally disorder. Pathological, as in, caused by a physical or mental disease which shows itself in compulsive and obsessive behavior. He repeatedly lies until he believes his untruths. The term, sociopath denotes a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience. Trump has no empathy or care for us. He wants all the power and all the money. He wants to be king.

And today, we get this tweet from President Donald John Trump, “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” And you thought I was being crazy with my comments? There is no way the November 3, 2020 election will be postponed. Donald Trump is preemptively setting up his challenge to an election result that says he didn’t win. He’s a corrupt, lying, low-life dullard. The President does not have the power to change the date of an election. Let me add that if the election were postponed, all the Representatives and Senators who are on the ballot for November 3, 2020 would have to leave the building on January 1, 2021. Yes, their terms would have expired. I wonder if they know that.

Trump is quite predictable. We now have second quarter economic stats. Remember when the Great Orange Liar was running around the country claiming the economy is wonderful and the second quarter would be great? How did that work out? The GDP dropped 32.9 points, which is not good. Trump sent out a fake economist, Larry Kudlow, to say that we are in good shape and moving in the right direction. The two of them should be evicted from the White House for misrepresenting reality.

Trump’s tweet is intended to distract the media from reporting the real problems — millions out of work, no one has money, the economy is melting down and, by the way, 152,000 Americans ARE DEAD from COVID-19. Donald Trump’s lack of action, poor communication and bad policies have caused DEATH!

The sky is falling. I originally wrote a harsh, name-calling paragraph to go in this spot, but after seeing the wonderful service for Representative John Lewis in Atlanta a golden angel tapped on my shoulder and said, “He’s winning when you call him names.” She is right. Calling the idiot in the White House the c, f, k, m or q word doesn’t do any good. What we really need is another MARCH ON WASHINGTON, where millions of people surround the people’s house, tear down the barriers and peacefully demand he leave. What would happen?

BUY THE WHOLE COLLECTION

Click Here.


WHAT DID WE EXPECT?

The Trump Train Crashes, Again

I hate writing about Donald Trump. I wake up every day and I consume a healthy amount of news articles, posts and pontifications. Ever since I was a newspaper delivery boy in Pittsburgh sixty years ago, I’ve read about our government every day. I know that lunatics usually attract other lunatics to their camp, and when such a group decides to act on a rumor, conspiracy or lie, bad things happen. As we all know, the government is not always on the side of truth or its citizens. Small-minded people in power usually protect themselves at any cost, even if they must lie.

America is being beaten into submission by a global pandemic and many of our leaders either ignore the facts or, unbelievably, pass along false information. Donald John Trump has no idea what he’s talking about, especially when on matters of medical science and COVID-19. Why do they let him talk and who is the “they” in this equation? He cannot accept the fact that he could be wrong about anything. It amazes me that he will likely kill more people with his ongoing, ruthless promotion of an unproven drug. We have 63 million doses of hydroxychloroquine sitting in the national stockpile. The FDA says we shouldn’t use the drug to treat the coronavirus, while Trump continues pitching it The President says he treated himself with hydroxychloroquine, but no doctor has verified that claim. I wonder who in the administration owns stock in the manufacturers of this treatment?

Could Trump be so focused on his early commitment to this malaria drug that he’s trying to get doctors to treat COVID patients with it simply to justify his decision? Did you notice that the Donald retweeted a total WHACK JOB DOCTOR and claimed that she was creditable when he doesn’t know anything about her? It’s par for the man’s course of non-action. He’s an ineffective fool and needs to be removed from the process of fighting the virus.

At least the stupid tweets of Donald Trump Jr. got him off Twitter for twelve hours. I’ve been there, done that, have the T-shirt and can only hope he will get banned for life, like I did. Twitter claimed that I was, wait for it, “interrupting conversations” and “manipulating multiple accounts” to increase my trends. Isn’t that what the Trump family does? But let’s get back to the real problem, the obese, old man.

The big orange pumpkin is trying to get people to NOT WEAR MASKS, take a drug that could kill them and strong arm local boards to reopen their schools, now! He ignores the science, research and medical realities. He’s like Napoleon going to Waterloo and worrying more about getting the presidential suite at the Ritz Carlton than fortifying his army for the big battle. Trump has met his Waterloo, and it’s a tiny, silent, invisible virus.

Witch Doctor to Trust?

Trump and the media have been tricked into giving a crazy Houston doctor, an immigrant from Cameroon who has practiced medicine in New York at the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center, too much press and power. Her name is Stella Gwandiku-Ambe Immanuel, and when not practicing at her small clinic in a strip mall she preaches at her church in the parking lot. While saying that the devil has a hand in masturbation, she also claims that scientists are taking alien DNA and producing a vaccine that will make people abandon their religions. This is more than a distraction; it’s a travesty.

And this just in from one of our readers, quoting Sean Hamill of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “An infamous nursing home in Beaver County (north of Pittsburgh) where so many residents died was administering hydroxychloroquine and zinc with permission from the state department of health. They were supposed to get permission from the patients, or at least, the patients’ guardians, but they didn’t bother with that nicety.” These people should go to jail, and the person who encouraged this witchcraft should be in there with them.

The worst part of the President’s little press briefing yesterday was his stupid denial that there is no disagreement or conflict with the COVID task force. Trump keeps saying that he and Dr. Anthony Fauci get along, but then he maligns him. He says the same thing about Kim Jong-Un, President Xi and Putin. What a dolt! My mouth fell open when he riffed about how Fauci’s poll numbers were so much better than his and couldn’t understand why. He claimed that people don’t like him because of his personality. Poor baby.

To end my pile of steaming anger today I say that Trump’s personality is bothersome and annoying. He overuses the word “strongly” and often applies it incorrectly. I wonder if he ever studied the English language. When he talks about the horribly bad deaths of 151,000 Americans, he uses the word, “tremendous.” Now we know that word means a “great or large amount,” but it also means “extremely good or impressive and excellent.” Connotatively, one might think that Trump believes something that is bad is actually good. He’s full of what I call “hamburger helper” words that don’t add meaning and many times imply the opposite of what he’s trying to communicate. What did we possibly expect would happen? TRUMP IS AN IDIOT AND WE NEED TO BE RID OF HIM!

BUY THE WHOLE COLLECTION

Click Here.


WILLIAM BARR THE DOOR

Political Operative Ideolog A.G.

I respect most of the institutions of our government, but I never assume everyone nominated and confirmed to run those departments, commissions and agencies are honest or hold our citizens’ interests as a priority. Simply put, we have dishonest people in every walk of life, including government. It’s sad, but true.

When Donald John Trump was elected President, it wasn’t a great surprise that he nominated Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as Attorney General of the United States of America. Sessions was the first member of Congress to endorse Trump and he became a central figure in his campaign. Mr. Sessions led to the administration bringing onboard Stephen Miller, the vile speech writer and immigration hardliner. As much as I do not like Sessions, when he was called upon to do the right thing, the legal thing, he recused himself from the Russian interference investigation.

BORED BILL

Trump lost it and bitched that he didn’t have an Attorney General to protect him from people who wanted to get at the truth. In Trumpean thought, the A.G. is supposed to be the President’s attorney, not the head of all law enforcement in America. That notion is clearly wrong. The White House has their own legal counsel who work with the President and the administration. The Department of Justice is supposed to be a fully independent part of the Executive Branch and work for equal justice under the law. So, Sessions hung on until the Donald found William Barr to be his shield against oversight.

How did Trump find his new A.G.? Barr applied for the job by writing a white paper sharing his belief in the “almost absolute” power of the Chief Executive. Of course, he was the perfect choice. There is no doubt that William Barr is a far-right ideolog who doesn’t see the difference between his political desires to protect his version of the republic and his responsibility to protect the America public from injustices, political tricks and the lies of President Trump. He judged and announced his view of the Mueller Report before we had a chance to see it. Who made him the Supreme Court or Chief Justice?

In his haste to please Trump, William Barr has trampled the First Amendment and caused many to distrust his department and the system. He is making things worse, not better, just as his orange boss does. The members of Congress, and especially those Senators who confirmed Barr, are complicit in his corrupt reign. Showing a long, cunningly edited video during the House Judiciary hearing was an over the top excess of propaganda.

I am highly irritated by William Barr because he never presents unbiased and apolitical viewpoints on law or the Executive Branch. I hate to say this because we have a lawyer in the family, but Barr comes off as a sleazy back office lawyer with his hand out, not so much for cash but for approval from those who agree with him. He’s not focused on ways to make things better. He never advises the President to use negotiation tactics. At every turn, Barr understands what Trump wants, spoken or unspoken, and proceeds to deliver the goods.

Barr is using the statistics of white and Black deaths at the hands of law enforcement as evidence that systemic racism is not part of police departments in America. This is Donald Trump’s position and now we hear Barr’s frog-like mouth spewing the same drivel. After being so confident there is no racism with police, he wraps those decrees with words about Tim Scott, the Black Senator of South Carolina, being pulled over by police in D.C. Isn’t that a glaring example of systemic racism?

“Operation Relentless Pursuit” is an anti-crime program which was started right before the coronavirus pandemic. According to Barr, that plan was brushed aside while the administration wielded their shoddy combat against the pandemic. The program was restarted under orders from Trump who named it “Operation Legend.” I have no idea what that means, but I am always skeptical of any domestic law enforcement effort that needs a name. They should be reserved for military actions abroad. The strange label is Orwellian phraseology to justify their unconstitutional acts.

William Barr thinks he is above the law because he is part of the Executive Branch. He can be arrested and tried for any crime, but here’s a question. Who would arrest him? The person who initiates prosecution is Barr himself. Yes, he could be impeached, but that has proven to be a partisan activity without any truth being presented. We must wait for an election.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal

During the House hearing yesterday, Barr continued to deny the use of tear gas at Lafayette Park on June 1, 2020, while a US National Guard major testified in different House hearing that tear gas was used, and he knows it. He picked up the shells on the street that day. And when Representative Pramila Jayapal of Michigan challenged Barr on why white nationalist protesters in Michigan earlier this year did not face the same federal response as Black Live Matter protesters, Barr argued it’s a matter for governors. It was alarming to this observer that the Attorney General had no awareness of the threats of death and hanging of the state’s Governor during those protests, where right wing radicals were armed with automatic weaponry. The Justice Department sees the pro-Trump people as positive, while Black Lives Matter people are thought of as terrorists. Who is this man?

I have no respect for William Barr. I am sure that if he was the first Trump A.G. there would never have been the Mueller investigation or report. I’m also quite sure the facts of Russian interference during the 2016 election would have been swept under the rug. We live in a world where the only things that matter are Donald Trump’s priorities, and all that Trump cares about are those things that make him look good. There is no regard for what is best for our citizenry, and Barr is a parasite on the wounded body of American democracy, eating away at people’s rights.

I know that being the Attorney General is a tough job and the number of cases that person must oversee is outrageous. With thousands of pending decisions, the A.G. must keep a focus on the most important matters. Yes, the Attorney General should appear at Congressional hearings to explain to the American public what they are doing and how they are doing it. They also must justify questionable words and actions. When they lie under oath, they are breaking the law. We cannot have a deceitful Attorney General.

Barr will leave when Trump leaves and he will probably write a book that will show him as the big, fat, white-man hero riding a white horse, but he’s just another dirtball politician who shades, covers and lies to protect Donald Trump. It’s just another brick in the wall separating us all from truth and justice. Barr’s father gave us Jeffrey Epstein and he gave pardons to all the Iran-Contra criminals. We need to get serious about confirmation hearings. Barr should never have been confirmed. We need to STOP BAD GUYS from gaining power in America.

The book that tells it like it is…

Gold, God, Guns & Goofballs: If you only read one chapter of this book, try “Take a Knee for America” and think about our never-ending conflicts between minorities and the police. I’m not asking you to take a stand but having a deep and honest conversation about why some people think the way they do would be productive. This is a book for the moment which seeks to start a conservation about peace. And if you are worried about social media, you really should check out the chapter called “Social Media Menace.”

Get the Kindle Version HERE. Or order your paperback edition HERE.

 

 


USPS & ZIP CODE CALAMITY

Trump’s War Against the Post Office

I am about to go postal over Donald John Trump’s fatuous maligning of another American institution. You may be wondering why our President doesn’t like the US Postal Service (USPS). He’s probably unaware about how this government facility works, but nonetheless he’s been slapping them around for years. Here’s the truth about why that is.

Donald Trump has said, “The Postal Service is a joke!” Even though his administration could be described the same way, Trump has a bee in his bonnet and is obsessed with one of the oldest services in America. The United States Postal Service, simply called “the Post Office” by many, is an independent agency of the Executive Branch of the US federal government. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution. So, unless Donald J. Trump thinks he’s going to change the Constitution, the US Mail will survive, but he’s changing things and trying to hurt it.

Trump suffers from what I call “destructive capitalism.” This should not be confused with “destructive creation,” which refers to circumstances in which innovation results in more damage than benefits. For example, if you were once a bowling pin setter, when automation came along you were no longer needed. Trump honestly believes that every part of the government, from domestic services to foreign relations to trade, should make a profit. He would rather hurt another country with a “win-lose” deal than figure out a mutually beneficial plan.

Money is Trump’s father, son and holy ghost. He goes crazy when he sees someone like Jeff Bezos making more money than he and family nets. People claim Donald Trump is worth $2.1 billion, while many experts believe Jeff Bezos’ worth is over $178.2 billion. When Bezos bought the Washington Post newspaper, Trump decided that Amazon and Bezos were out to get him. There is some reason to believe that when Jeff Bezos phone was hacked and the story of his affair and subsequent divorce was leaked to the press, Trump’s friends were behind the breach and blackmailing.

Trump has a thing about the Postal Service because Amazon had been using it for years to deliver tons of Amazon packages. Postal workers were making oodles of overtime pay to deliver them on Saturdays and Sundays. Trump probably doesn’t see the strange arrangement the USPS has with Congress. Unlike other services and departments, they are set up as a “self-sufficient” entity with no tax dollars used to cover their overruns and blistering budgets.

The USPS has 31,000 post offices and another 4,000 contractor-run mail shops, each with their own overhead costs. I thought that the post offices, each having their own zip code, would have been great COVID-19 testing stations, but then, I am a creative capitalist. Now, let’s get back to the economics of the Post Office.

The Postal Service has 300,000 fewer employees than it did twenty years ago, but it still retains 500,000 people and has 600,000 retirees who receive health and pension benefits. They also are unionized. Trump doesn’t want to push the union out; he simply wants to make them another whipping boy.

The US Postal Service lost $8.8 billion in fiscal 2019, which is more than double its losses of the previous year. It makes some sense that a service which charges money should be able to figure out a way to compete. This is especially true since there is only one postal service. But wait, that isn’t quite true. The mega corporations UPS and FedEx deliver packages and, indeed, letters and documents. Let’s also not forget that Amazon has its own delivery force out there every day.

Every country I have ever visited has a postal service. It’s the way letters and notices of official purpose get delivered. A postal service legally documents that something was sent and received. In addition to the USPS not making money, Trump sees a buttload of money going to Bezos and he’s miffed about that. He wants the Post Office to raise its rates.

This new tick Trump has about mail-in voting being a corrupt conspiracy against Republicans, especially him, should sound a siren in your brain. The Donald knows that his goose is cooked, and he’s plotting the excuse he will use when he loses the election. He will also declare the election is invalid. The Post Office is just a convenient place for Trump to stop the COVID motivated march to all mail-in ballots, which would actually be more robust in terms of security and reporting results.

We know that a recent Republican attempt to corrupt mail-in voting in Paterson, New Jersey was caught by, wait for it, postal workers. Yes, they found a bundle of ballots, and after an investigation four people were arrested on charges of fraud in casting mail-in votes, unauthorized possession of ballots and falsifying or tampering with public records. Those arrested included the Patterson’s City Council Vice President, a guy named Michael Jackson. No, I am not making this up.

Michael Jackson, Paterson, NJ

In 2018, there was absentee mail in ballot corruption in North Carolina, in which Leslie McCrae Dowless was charged with two counts of felony obstruction of justice, perjury, solicitation to commit perjury, conspiracy to obstruct justice and illegal possession of absentee ballots. The investigation caused the election results to be overturned and a new election took place.

So, there are two cases which Trump often cites that involved Republicans. Both were discovered and both produced prosecutions. The Post Office is not the problem. Trump is.

One of my friends used to be a letter carrier and I asked him what is going on. He was not happy for his comrades. The rank and file are dismayed by Trump’s new pick for Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy. He’s another financial contributor to Trump with no knowledge of how the Postal Service works, but it is surely doing his bidding. In an early move, DeJoy ended the same day guarantee service for all those Amazon packages, and that took a bunch of overtime pay from the guys and ladies of the USPS. Next, with pandemic hitting the postal service harder than most companies, they are forced into limited service. If you haven’t noticed, the money-making junk mail marketing letters and flyers are way down. States used the USPS to deliver their mail-in ballots, but many didn’t arrive on time. This shocking story by NPR details how many ballots were rejected because they were late.

Rather than fix this problem, Congress is sitting on their hands and Trump is going to blow up the USPS. That man knows how to complain but he has absolutely NO ABILITY to fix. He’s a useless human being, and he’s fat. There, I feel much better now. I’m headed to the mailbox to see what was delivered today.

The book that tells it like it is…

Gold, God, Guns & Goofballs: If you only read one chapter of this book, try “Take a Knee for America” and think about our never-ending conflicts between minorities and the police. I’m not asking you to take a stand but having a deep and honest conversation about why some people think the way they do would be productive. This is a book for the moment which seeks to start a conservation about peace. And if you are worried about social media, you really should check out the chapter called “Social Media Menace.”

Get the Kindle Version HERE. Or order your paperback edition HERE.


HYBRID EDUCATION

DeVos & Trump Need More Facts

Healthy people often have an unaware viewpoint on illness, but that doesn’t stop them from getting COVID-19. Professional baseball player Freddie Freeman was surprised when he became infected with COVID-19. His wife commented, “Freddie never gets sick.” After three days of fever, which topped off at 104.5F, he survived and rested himself back into health and back to the field this weekend. He’s lucky.

Freddie Freeman

When I heard that the mask-free, national political convention scheduled for late August in Jacksonville, Florida was canceled by President Trump, I asked about the inconsistencies. The aspirational bullshit that Trump pumps out of his small pie-hole confuses and divides people. If it’s not safe to have a convention, then how could it possibly be harmless to send kids back to school? United States Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is either dumb or she’s under the spell of Trump’s insanity. She’s not worthy of her lofty position in America.

Many former Trump administrators have told us that our great orange president does not read. His press secretary claims that the Donald can read, but most people have been successful convincing him with pictures (Syrian use of chemical weapons) or videos (Caravans in Mexico). Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words, but the words are where one finds facts, figures and nuances. Trump is NOT into those things.

In my newest book How To Hire Great People, I point out that human beings learn in three different ways. Some folks learn by reading the instructions and studying the how. Others learn by working with a mentor who performs and teaches the task. Then there are those who jump in blindly trying to master the task on their own. The first two are more reasonable. We wouldn’t want airplane pilots or nuclear power plant workers to use the third method. I have always been around educators and have several in the family. My mother was a secretary at my hometown elementary school. I was always put in the third reading group in school because of how slowly I read. I loved reading but speed wasn’t the issue, it was comprehension.

I never did well with mathematics scholastic testing during the 1950s and 60s, but I always scored highly in “abstract thought.” I assumed that meant I was a good daydreamer and storyteller. If only we could understand how to better teach students with specific talents, we might have happier pupils and a more productive educational system.

Betsy DeVos

We turned to home schooling and online learning when the coronavirus pandemic hit America. Some of those programs worked, but those students without an internet connection and computer were left behind. Witch of Education DeVos thinks that giving families money to pay private schools to take their kids back is a workable plan, but that would do NOTHING for all the kids. She’s a disgraceful, rich, privileged disregarder who doesn’t understand children. None of her kids attended public school, she was never a member of a PTA group and I am sure she doesn’t understand the term, “hybrid education.” While she and her husband were conning housewives into an almost-pyramid scheme at Amway, educational budgets were cut to the bone.

Trump wants to reopen schools only because his advisors tell him that parents cannot go back to work if their kids are at home every day. That point is true, but at what cost? Donny and Betsy have not considered the health of teachers, administrators, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, security guards and the many volunteers working in schools every day. Their focus is on the kids and an imaginary armor against disease. The unproven statement that kids do not spread the virus as much as adults is as disingenuous as the statement, “Anyone who wants a test can get a test.” It was a lie when Trump said it months ago, and it is still a lie.

I am amazed that this country, which litigated and decided it’s okay to home school our kids, is mandating our students back into classrooms right now! What most parents would like is a hybrid educational plan, so that families can remain safe while advancing their children’s learning. After throwing money to large corporations and cunning small businesses, America has failed the need for education. We didn’t calculate the cost of mitigation for each school. When Trump said the CDC plan to open the schools was too expensive and too difficult to execute, he was being a bully and a supreme asshole. Why shouldn’t we spend money on our kids?

The final straw for me was the advice the CDC promoted after the spanking from our President. After Donald Trump is voted out or leaves office on his own, we should blow up the CDC, Homeland Security and Border Protection services and start all over. When Betsy DeVos is gone, we should invest in a research project to classify students who can learn with online material, who can be taught by reading and who can absorb from experience. We need to revamp our educational systems and funnel tax dollars into methods that work. Screw the notion of choice, it’s just another means of segregation. How much money are we giving to private charter schools and do they make better students? Most importantly, we MUST have an educator run the Department of Education. No more broke-brain donors with wrinkled dumb looks and no answers.

The book that tells it like it is…

Gold, God, Guns & Goofballs: If you only read one chapter of this book, try “Take a Knee for America” and think about our never-ending conflicts between minorities and the police. I’m not asking you to take a stand but having a deep and honest conversation about why some people think the way they do would be productive. This is a book for the moment which seeks to start a conservation about peace. And if you are worried about social media, you really should check out the chapter called “Social Media Menace.”

Get the Kindle Version HERE. Or order your paperback edition HERE.


SEVERE PERSONALITY DISORDER

“Person, woman, man, camera, TV”

A lucky person gets old and lives as long as possible. Age brings some slowing down physically and some less than glowing moments mentally. A doctor I’ve spent a lot of time with summed it up this way, “Plaque builds up in your brain and there’s nothing you can do about it.” I followed up with, “Well, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?” My mother left us having Alzheimer’s disease and I wonder if those who share her DNA might be prone to such a fate in later years.

We expect and should demand that our presidents be in reasonably good health, both physically and mentally. Seventeen years before he was elected president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was confined to a wheelchair because he suffered from poliomyelitis (Polio), which could have been a misdiagnosis. He probably had Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS), an autoimmune neuropathy, but FDR’s doctors never thought that was possible. The press and the White House went out of their way to avoid showing the 32nd President in a wheelchair. This conspiracy extended to his four terms, but he died shortly into his fourth term. The 22nd Amendment limits all presidents to two terms, thank God.

Starting in the 1940s, John Fitzgerald Kennedy suffered Addison’s disease and in 1955 he was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, an insufficient output of thyroid hormones. The symptoms of this disorder include paleness, intolerance to cold, depression and a low heart rate. I guess that’s why he chased women. Both the womanizing and the ailments were known by some but not reported at that time. Woodrow Wilson, our 28th President, suffered a severe stroke in October of 1919 and was incapacitated for the remainder of his presidency. He left the White House in 1921 and died in 1924. Historians believe his second wife, Edith Wilson, ran the Executive Branch for the last year of the term.

That brings us to Donald Trump. If you have read the books by John Bolton and Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump, you would be totally convinced that Trump should never have been elected President and that he should be removed from office as soon as possible. Not to beat a sick horse, but a stark quote from Bolton’s book, In the Room Where It Happened, makes me believe there is something seriously wrong with Donald Trump. “Mulvaney put the call through, and Mnuchin gave Trump the same analysis I had. Trump agreed, hours after disagreeing with precisely the same points, to keep the decisions in place. Hearing this, I asked Mulvaney if I had not been clear about this the day before. “You were very clear about it,” said Mulvaney, “but sometimes it takes two or three tries to get it through.” Mind you, this was not a conversation about choosing a restaurant for dinner, they were discussing a national security issue. Could plaque be wining?

Dr. Ronnie Jackson

Trump’s buddy and former White House doctor, Dr. Ronnie Lynn Jackson will most likely win the Congressional seat for the 13th district of Texas. If you remember, Jackson was nominated by Trump to be the Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs, but withdrew his bid when questions arose about his conduct while working. It was alleged he dispensed sleeping pills to staffers on long flights, he drank on the job and he created a hostile working environment. But hey, this just proves that anybody can run for office.

Back in 2018, Dr. Ronnie administered the annual physical of the President. When finished, Jackson stood in the press room at the White House to give a glowing, almost adoring, report on the President’s health. Not only did Jackson reinforce a notion that the Donald has superior DNA, but he dropped the fact that he gave Trump a cognitive test. I believe it was the MONTREAL COGNITIVE ASSESSMENT, which you can learn more about here. I must point out that test was administered to Trump two years ago. It’s not clear why Dr. Jackson used that instrument unless Trump asked for it, wanting to prove something.

SIDE BAR: For the last six years of his life, Fred Trump, Donald’s father, suffered from Alzheimer’s disease before dying of pneumonia in June 1999. This might be the reason our President wanted to be checked for cognitive decline. He has a strange need to overstate his intelligence and strength. I’m sure it’s due to a deep inferiority complex, but I am not a doctor.

There was a common quip when I was young that went something like this. A crazy person never admits they are crazy. If someone said, “Yeah, sure, I’m nuts!” it led to a belief they weren’t. So, is Trump’s brain in decline? Is he suffering from a severe personality disorder? Let’s me state this very clearly, his defensiveness is a disorder in and of itself.

Some people over-explain things, but that is not necessarily caused by a brain misalignment. However, when speech patterns are extremely repetitive and defensive, one could be led into an armchair analysis. I agree with Mary L. Trump’s supposition that young Donald suffered from a learning disability that caused problems absorbing, retaining and understanding information. Such an incapacity could impair the ability of a president to effectively govern. The wheelchair didn’t keep FDR from winning a World War and JFK’s Addison’s kept him awake at night which probably gave him more time to work, but I worry about our 45th President.

We have heard all the cutting comments from Trump’s critics, but there might be something else in play when he attempts to project worries about his own cognitive durability onto Biden. Trump often accuses others of something he has already done or is about to do. He’s transparent with his flaws but secretive on normal business. It’s clear that he doesn’t know how to act like a president.

Donald Trump’s rambling the other day with Dr. Marc Siegel on Fox News was farcical. He was bragging about scoring a perfect score on a test to determine whether his mind is in decline or showing the onset of dementia. It’s always perfect with Trump, a perfect letter, a perfect call, a perfect meeting. There is never any gradation with him. The Montreal test isn’t about the score, it’s the way answers are given and any delays requiring prompts from the doctor. The score is one aspect of the test, but the doctor’s evaluation and interpretation equally matter. I wouldn’t let Dr. Ronnie Jackson play doctor with my grandkids, let alone believe anything he says about his God figure, Donald Trump. Jackson’s election pitch in Texas was entirely focused on his friendship with Trump. Jeez!

I feel sorry when hearing Trump go over the recall aspect of his test and his repetition of the words, “Person, woman, man, camera, TV.” He’s so proud of a perfect score and somehow believes he achieved something no other person ever has. I’m reminded of a toddler bragging to his mommy about going potty. Dr. Jackson is just another enabler, vocalizing drugs to get the American people hooked on the absurd notion that Trump is supernatural. If Donald has the same DNA as his father, his ending will be similar. Sorry, it’s just science.

The book that tells it like it is…

Gold, God, Guns & Goofballs: If you only read one chapter of this book, try “Take a Knee for America” and think about our never-ending conflicts between minorities and the police. I’m not asking you to take a stand but having a deep and honest conversation about why some people think the way they do would be productive. This is a book for the moment which seeks to start a conservation about peace. And if you are worried about social media, you really should check out the chapter called “Social Media Menace.”

Get the Kindle Version HERE. Or order your paperback edition HERE.


THE EIGHT MYTHS OF COVID-19

Not all that the White House says is true

Donald Trump is a damn bully and the best way to deal with him is to stand up to him. Aside from the on-going self-adulation, dislocated policies and dangerous theories, Trump has managed to confuse his experts, the leaders in the House and Senate, and bamboozle his employers, the American public. I am not a doctor or virologist, but I know how to read and research and today I’d like to bring some logic into the public realm.

As we nearly reach 144,000 coronavirus deaths with four million infected Americans, let’s look at the lies, the myths, the misdirects and the reckless musings of an idiot:

  1. The COVID-19 virus is a novel virus, meaning it has not been seen before and thwarting this evil germ will take techniques that differ from the way doctors treat a flu. The first myth from Donald Trump and many other crazy dictators and leaders around the world was that COVID-19 was just like the flu and not as dangerous. The numbers show otherwise. The global pandemic is twice to four times as dangerous. It’s just math, not myth.
  2. The idea of one country containing a virus might be a semi-valid criticism, and just like Donald Trump downplayed the virus at its start here, President Xi in China did the same. Their motivation was stock market stability. Trump’s over-stated fantasy claimed that he saved two million lives. He also said that keeping the death count below 100,000 would be a total success. What? If we could have confined the virus to those first hotspot states, Washington, California and the tri-state area of New York, we would have saved many of the lives that are now lost. It’s a damn myth that China could have stopped the coronavirus and we can’t either. Calling COVID-19 the “China virus” is like calling a mental disability the Trump syndrome.
  3. If you ignore a virus, it will just go away. Trump’s glowing statements about what he has accomplished when facts prove otherwise, make him look senseless. Here’s a great quote from the highly intelligent Ron Brownstein, “In some ways, Trump has become a prisoner of his own base.” He doesn’t test what he’s about to say against any other measure, than what those red hat heretics want to hear. The fact that Trump said, “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.” Even a dead person, if given the chance, would muster enough strength to suggest, “It’s the death, stupid!”
  4. Keeping people away from work, entertainment and school is going to kill them just the same. Trump and his other propagandists have stated that if the economic shutdown continues, deaths by suicide “definitely would be in far greater numbers than the numbers that we’re talking about” for COVID-19 deaths. That is totally insane, but let’s not get confused by the sad statistics on suicides in America. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in America. We had 48,344 people die by suicide in 2018 and they believe there were 1.4 million attempts. In a world where Donald John Trump is so loose with the facts, why would he give anyone the suggestion of suicide as a cure for being confined at home? It’s downright dangerous, but the man never filters his words.
  5. We have heard the distortion by our President that, “99% of COVID-19 cases are totally harmless.” Excuse my French, but “C’est l’idée la plus stupide que quiconque ait jamais dite.” Translation, Trump is fucking nonsensical beyond belief. The facts: 15% of COVID-19 cases become “very serious” and as many as 5% can lead to death. When someone uses the word, “harmless,” the logical conclusion is it’s benign to most people. The jury is still out regarding the long-term effects of COVID-19 and the true percentages. When the word, “harmless” is used, it connotatively suggests we can let our guard down. We cannot.
  6. The latest myth that has crept into the speech patterns of Trump and his clueless sycophants in Congress and around the country is that young kids are not as susceptible to getting COVID and do not spread it as much as adults do. Now I am going to make this personal. My daughter has always worked in daycare and she has been around two-year-old kids for years. In any given year, she and her five-year-old daughter will get as many as five colds and suffer through whatever the current yearly flu might be. To suggest that it’s okay to allow kids to be exposed to the virus and then go home is a form of government sanctioned murder of our teachers and other school workers. Here’s some true bad news for our schools. The Secretary of Education is Betsy DeVos, a rich donor with no experience or expertise in education or medicine; she is simply a useless public servant.
  7. There are no quick fixes like using disinfectants, untested drugs or sunshine to kill the virus. For months we were fed the drivel it will go away as soon as it gets warmer. That lie was based not on specific, scientific COVID data, but on the experiences we’ve had with normal influenza. The successful path would have been rigorous testing to determine who was infected then keeping healthy people away from them. We are doing a terrible job with contact tracing, which could help stop the spread of COVID. If you must go out in public, you should wear a mask. Dr. Debra Birx should be ashamed for not jumping out of her chair saying, “NO, NO, NO,” when Trump suggested ingesting or injecting bleach could cure the virus.
  8. You can trust what is coming out of the President’s mouth regarding the COVID crisis. It’s all defensive posturing, political hogwash and very little useful advice. Any intelligent person watching this governmental cluster-fuck can clearly see that Donald Trump’s approach has made our situation worse, not better. According to Forbes magazine, “64% of Americans distrust what Trump says about the Covid-19 pandemic—including 46% who say they don’t trust him ‘at all’—while only 34% trust what he says.”

I just read something brilliant from Marshall Shepherd, Director of the Atmospheric Science program at the University of Georgia. He has coined the term, “Wishcasting.” This is what we get daily from Donald Trump. Mr. Shepherd amplified his concept, “People ‘wishcast’ scenarios in our minds, but they don’t jibe with what the science or the data is actually bearing out.” When we hear about someone winning the lottery, our first thought is that it should have been us. We don’t feel good for the person who won a million dollars. We “wishcast” our thoughts and prayers every day, but that isn’t how we solve a problem. You could buy a lottery ticket every day of your life and never win a million dollars.

Hopefully, this list of myths will not grow, but I suspect it will. By the way, that is not a wish, just an educated guess. A friend of mine just wrote that in her school district in Georgia, three of her co-worker principals are on ventilators and one high school coach in his twenties has died, I wished it were better there. I know that opening schools is just more “wishcasting” by Trump, who would rather kill some people and win another election then do what is right for America. That isn’t a myth, it’s just who he is.  

The book that tells it like it is…

Gold, God, Guns & Goofballs: If you only read one chapter of this book, try “Take a Knee for America” and think about our never-ending conflicts between minorities and the police. I’m not asking you to take a stand but having a deep and honest conversation about why some people think the way they do would be productive. This is a book for the moment which seeks to start a conservation about peace. And if you are worried about social media, you really should check out the chapter called “Social Media Menace.”

Get the Kindle Version HERE. Or order your paperback edition HERE.


TRUMP’S GRAND CAPITULATION

“That’s not enforceable”

On national TV last night, President Donald John Trump used the words, “It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better,” and with that one phrase he invalidated weeks of words attempting to downplay the crisis, even going so far as calling the whole matter a hoax. He added, “We’re asking everybody that when you are not able to socially distance, wear a mask, get a mask. Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact, they’ll have an effect and we need everything we can get.” I’ll ignore the poor construct of the English language. but Donny Boy is going to piss off the far-right, and Fox News will have to rewrite all their anointment scripts and routines. Gee, do they now point out that Trump was wrong all along, or do they just smile and praise him for his quick action to bolster his poor poll numbers?

Many of our state governors have now created a lame-ass justification for their inaction on signing a law to mandate masks. “That’s not enforceable,” they say. Why? I have never seen weaker, less compassionate governance in America. Governors have no problem calling up the National Guard when a disaster hits their states, so why can’t they act to keep people safer? Is it because of a vague notion that people will comply with a regulation only if it can be compelled by law enforcement? What about seat belts, smoking in public locations and having a driver’s license? Heck, in my county I cannot cut down a tree in my yard without replacing it with a tree of equal girth. That could cost me more than $1,000, but is it enforceable? The county can’t possibly know every tree.

Trump will still NOT sign an executive order because he’s a chicken-shit president. I can imagine what Teddy Roosevelt would say if were alive, “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” He did speak those words, and he was right. Trump has failed America by not trying to help us. What advice might President John Kennedy have given to Donald Trump? Perhaps, “There are risks and costs to action, but they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction.” Abraham Lincoln would whisper in the Donald’s ear, “The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.”

Of course, what those leaders would say to Trump in private would likely contain harsh language and possibly profanity; well, maybe not Lincoln. I am curious how long Trump’s thoughtful stance on the COVID-19 crisis will last. Later today will he revert to whiny diatribes about how great things were before China unleashed this terrible “plague” on America?

Trump has decided that China created a pandemic to hurt him and will start to paint them as the enemy that he, and he alone, can conquer. The Donald insists he has a great relationship with President Xi. I would replace “great” with “dysfunctional” because Xi doesn’t tell Trump the truth. I am disturbed that no one from the media asks our president this question, “Why do you keep scolding Xi for not containing the virus when you have been unable to contain it here?”

There is no proof that any country can totally stop this virus. We saw what happened in Sweden. They killed a lot of older, weaker citizens in their mythical desire for “herd immunity.” We saw karma win in Brazil when their leader made fun of the virus.  Not only did their President get the virus, but their COVID data is horrible.  Brazil has confirmed 2.17 million known cases, with 81,597 deaths.

Trump blaming China for not “stopping the curse in its tracks” is verbiage for a speech but it’s not based on any science or knowledge about how viruses work. You cannot build a wall to stop a virus. Trump claimed to prevent Chinese citizens from entering the USA, but in fact many traveled here. Here’s a New York Times headline from April 4, 2020, “430,000 People Have Traveled From China to U.S. Since Coronavirus Surfaced.” They detailed 1,300 direct flights to 17 cities before President Trump’s travel restrictions. Since that so-called “ban,” nearly 40,000 Americans and other travelers from China made the trip. Their greeting upon arrival was spotty screening, at best. Trump is either lying or totally unaware of these facts. I’ll go with lying.

Donald Trump is incapable of understanding complex matters and situations. Someone should have taken the orange dumbbell into his private dining room and explained it this way, “Imagine that you have five men and five women sharing a cottage for a week of swinging and debauchery. You, Donald Trump, are one of the men. During the vacation you learn that one of the men in the party has a deadly venereal disease, but his identity cannot be disclosed because of a health privacy law known as HIPAA.”

Trump now considers his options. Should he get a nurse to come to the cabin and test everyone? He thinks no, because the more we test the worse it will seem. I’m extremely strong and healthy and I’ll use protection, but I don’t have enough for everyone so I will protect only myself. The next day the disease has spread to eight of the ten people. Trump thinks it’s going to worse before it gets better, but he’s fine because he’s protected. Next, he gets a fever and realizes he was the source of the sickness. He leaves the campsite to get help at a hospital. He asks another to explain the problem to all the campers so he can avoid facing them. Trump doesn’t even remember how many people he screwed.

I’ll end this post with REALITY. Trump’s change in tone has nothing to do with caring, empathy or knowledge. Kellyanne Conway wrote that announcement to counter the polling crisis, not the pandemic problem.

Trump is a fool. He’ll defund education, healthcare insurance and money for testing. He will attempt to close the CDC and will avoid all good tactics because he’s cares about himself only. God save the nation from this sloth with fake, thin skin.

The book that tells it like it is…

Gold, God, Guns & Goofballs: If you only read one chapter of this book, try “Take a Knee for America” and think about our never-ending conflicts between minorities and the police. I’m not asking you to take a stand but having a deep and honest conversation about why some people think the way they do would be productive. This is a book for the moment which seeks to start a conservation about peace. And if you are worried about social media, you really should check out the chapter called “Social Media Menace.”

Get the Kindle Version HERE. Or order your paperback edition HERE.


THE AUDACITY OF IGNORANCE

Politically Motivated Mask Wearing

Donald John Trump doesn’t want to be President, he wants to be Roger Ailes. Donald Trump doesn’t want to be the “leader of the free world,” he would rather be Mark Burnett. The Donald would much rather be doing a daily TV show, which is why he is always prepared by wearing his orange makeup should a television gig be suddenly offered. Just in case you don’t remember, Roger Ailes is the late CEO of Fox News network who was forced out over dozens of sexual harassment charges. Mark Burnett is a British TV producer who gave us the reality shows, Survivor and The Apprentice. Just yesterday, when Trump announced that the COVID-19 Task Force would resume daily television briefings, he had to brag about the big ratings for those events. WHAT?

That came on the same day this substantially rotund fat storage container tweeted a picture of himself wearing a mask saying that he’s been told people who wear masks are patriots. He capped the tweet with this announcement, “There is nobody more Patriotic than me, your favorite President!” Every time Trump makes what I call a “snowflake” claim, I always ask how can he possibly declare himself to be the most anything? By the way, I use “snowflake” to debunk the claim that every snowflake is unique. Since we cannot capture and photograph every snowflake, the assertion can never be proven. Trump cannot prove anything he says because most of his vocal output is pure bullshit.

I must admit, my mind has been forever changed after reading the brilliant observations in Mary L. Trump’s book. No longer will I give Trump credit for anything he says or does. Billions of dollars of broadcast airtime are wasted by talking about him every week but, sadly, his malfeasance and criminal activities are still not known and understood by all Americans.

Trump’s joy of putting down people and his vindictive and mean personality were exploited by Mark Burnett during The Apprentice show. The truth is, Burnett’s consistent scripting and brilliant editing made Trump look like a competent decision maker and businessman. What the book points out, and what we’ve seen and experienced with Trump’s inability to focus and move quickly, has deeply wounded America.

What Trump most envied about Ailes was his amazing power to shape opinions. After all, this was the guy who controlled everything and everyone at Fox News. The ratings soared and Fox News’ constant anti-Obama rhetoric excited and solidified a group of Americans which Trump exploited to get elected. Trump is titillated by the idea that Roger Ailes brought his women workers into a locked office to leer at and harass them. That is precisely the job Trump wants, but if he were in the corporate world and tried those acts he would be hauled into court. He misses the point that Mr. Ailes is a “disgraced” former head of the network and shortly after he left, he died.

Those who worked on The Apprentice show know that Mark Burnett has tons of outtakes on his hard drives. If they were to be released to the public, they would damage Trump just as much as the Access Hollywood video. NBC/Universal do not own this content, Burnett does. Maybe he has a fantasy to use Donald Trump as talent on a future show or perhaps Trump will start his very own news network after he leaves the White House so that his kids have something to do. Who knows?

Sure, America could use a daily virus task force briefing, but if they become more opportunities for long-winded, unfocused political tirades by Trump, who cares?  We don’t want or need that! What angers me most is the way his puppet governors in red states watch and imitate him and his routines. They are helping to spread COVID-19 by their bad policies while spreading a great amount of another virus, vitriol-2020.

Trump damaged America with his denial, inconsistency, poor language skills and inability to convince anyone he knows how to fight a pandemic. He says something then locks his mind on it, not because it’s a good idea but merely because it’s his idea. He wants to decrease or eliminate payroll taxes, which would cut off funding for Social Security. Why would you want to take away a payroll tax when there is so much unemployment? Once again, he’s talking without thinking.

He brags about taking the Montreal test, which helps medical professional gauge the scourge of Parkinson’s, dementia, or Alzheimer’s. It’s not what he says it is. The test, which you can take yourself RIGHT HERE, has nothing to do with intelligence. Once again, Trump says we have the lowest mortality with the COVID-19 cases, when we don’t. We are 7th in the world, and he won’t even admit he’s wrong even after he’s been shown the facts.

In the well-written conspiracy show on CNN last night, Fareed Zakaria revealed the many conspiracy theories Trump has embraced over the years. The show itself was not a theory, just facts about Trump’s known machinations against truth. He complains constantly about the “deep state,” that was baked into his brain by his father who was, at least, a Nazi and KKK sympathizer. The idea that repeating a lie makes it true is the logic of the ignorant.

Trump didn’t want to wear a mask for the same reason he doesn’t go out in public without wearing a mask of orange-hued foundation from Swiss brand Bronx Colors. What does he think he gains by lathering that putrid orange makeup on his face each day? Has he ever asked his wife if she thinks it looks good? The people around him  consistently protect him from criticism, meaning he will never know how badly he appears to everyone, except Stevie Wonder.

Trump said he wouldn’t wear a mask because it would make him look ridiculous. That was his word, not mine. Now that he’s wearing one proves two things. One, his words mean nothing and two, he’s only doing it now to help his poll numbers. If he were an intelligent person he would have sat down in the beginning of the crisis and gotten the best advice on how to fight this attack and lay out a plan. All he does in meetings is talk, and when others talk he doesn’t listen. With all due respect to Richard Nixon, Trump is the worse president ever. The Nixon mention was irony.

I wanted to make a mask with boldly printed words PRO-LIFE… and in smaller print underneath (mine). After some thought I decided against the plan rather than getting spat upon by some COSTCO shopper. We have systemic ignorance in America, and the head dunce Donald will lead some of the lemmings off the cliff. Don’t listen to him.

The book that tells it like it is…

Gold, God, Guns & Goofballs: If you only read one chapter of this book, try “Take a Knee for America” and think about our never-ending conflicts between minorities and the police. I’m not asking you to take a stand but having a deep and honest conversation about why some people think the way they do would be productive. This is a book for the moment which seeks to start a conservation about peace. And if you are worried about social media, you really should check out the chapter called “Social Media Menace.”

Get the Kindle Version HERE. Or order your paperback edition HERE.


THE MARY TRUMP BOOK

Just Another Dysfunctional Family?

I know how hard it is to write a book because I currently have four on sale. I was skeptical when I first learned that Mary L. Trump, the niece of the President of the United States, wrote a book about the Donald’s family. Was this just another person trying to make money on a ghosted, tell-all work of semi-nonfiction or was it real? I subscribe to the latter.

Mary Trump is a psychologist, businessperson and author with several impressive degrees from Tufts, Columbia and a Ph. D from Adelphi University. I’m not in love with the title of her book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, but seeing that she sold one million copies during the first release week, what in the hell do I know? I’ve read the book. It’s well-written and tells the unvarnished truth about what she saw growing up as the daughter of Fred and Mary Trump’s oldest son, Donald’s brother, Freddie. Her father died in In September 1981 at the age of 42 from an apparent heart attack because of his alcohol abuse. Mary was sixteen when her father passed.

The writing is compelling and the story, whether you like Donald Trump or not, has a magnetic pull. It’s almost a textbook about what she terms the “sociopathic” nature of Fred Trump, the patriarch of the family and Donald’s dad. President Trump had no protection from the many forms of his father’s criticism and pushback. After reading this book, I now totally understand so many things about Trump. Living the last four years of Trump-world forced me to build a giant arch out of bricks, but I couldn’t find the keystone. This book provides exactly that.

I pledge to not give away too much of the book here because I highly recommend you read it. Still, I need to offer a reasonable spoiler alert because I am about to dig a little more deeply into this book about Trump’s past. Mary’s book informs that Trump’s limited vocabulary is not the product of a concerted effort to streamline or dumb down his messages. It’s not a strategy. It’s how he talks, and it was the way Fred Sr. talked. The fact that “nasty” is Trump’s go to term to express disgust for women was his father’s trope.

Fred and Donald Trump

The President can go on TV and say that the family never liked Mary Trump and that he has had only slight interaction with her, but he also is quite aware that Mary, and her brother Fred Trump III (known as Fritz), sued the family to contest Fred Senior’s will. The two grandchildren were cut out of any benefits even though their grandfather and uncle Donald used secret payments to a shell company for years as a tax shelter. Reading the book, I saw that most of the known timelines and historical details she delivers are totally accurate. Why make up the rest?

The contents of this book deeply troubled me. After getting through its 225 pages, a cloud of depression washed over me. I knew families in the 1950s who had the same kind of grip on their children, and the familial manipulation of one of my high school friends led to his suicide. I came out of my funk when I realized how wonderful a childhood I had. This book will lead you to an understanding of why Donald wears the same suit every day, why he sits and stands the ways he does and why his signature is so bold and strange, It’s all there. Trump is a copy of his father in some ways, but also has his own personal layers of disfunction beyond the sociopath and narcistic personality disorders bestowed by his father. The byproduct of constant abuse, bullying and putdowns by his father led to Donald’s supreme defense mechanisms, an undeserved supremacy complex, frequent gloating and constant lying. Remember, this is not an armchair analysis by Mary Trump. She holds a Ph. D in clinical psychology.

After absorbing her story, I am profoundly fearful that Donald Trump’s mental instability makes him completely unfit for the office of president. Mary writes,He is as incapable of adjusting to changing circumstances as he is of becoming ‘presidential.’” Over the years, a common media myth has been Trump’s need to surround himself with people who are totally loyal. What I learned from reading this book is that it’s not loyalty Trump wants and needs. It’s obedience.

The book Too Much and Never Enough clearly explains why “Donald takes any rebuke as a challenge and doubles down on the behavior that drew fire in the first place, as if the criticism is permission to do worse.” This is what happened after the attempted drive-by impeachment earlier this year. It makes Senator Susan Collins’ comment that Trump has learned his lesson after trial to be one of the densest thoughts of all time.

Frederick Trump

The book highlighted a significant reality of the family structure. I have never been a big fan of a family’s lack of imagination when naming children. Why reuse names or fashion similar names of parents, grandparents and others in the family tree? Remember that Frederick is the writer’s German great grandfather, Fred is the grandfather and Freddie is the father of Mary L. Trump. Confused? Mary is the granddaughter of Mary Anne McLeod and the niece of Maryanne, Donald’s oldest sister. The fact that Donald Trump named his son Don, Jr. is just a continuation of this stupid scion obsession. By the way, Donald’s youngest son is named Barron because Trump used John Barron as a pseudonym when calling newspapers in New York to leak information. Because of the similar names, it’s often a struggle to keep all the stories straight when reading Mary’s book.

While she didn’t say so directly, I learned from Mary Trump’s book that Donald John Trump, the 45th President of the United States, suffers from an intellectual incapacity. Mary hints at learning disability and says that Trump paid another to take his SAT exam so he could get into the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. The book doesn’t allude to any large contributions to Penn by the Trump family, but those records have been sealed. The school is instructed to say only, “Donald Trump is an alum of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He holds an undergraduate degree in business.”

It doesn’t take a Ph. D to observe the President’s weak reading skills. When using a teleprompter during a speech, Trump mixes up words, mispronounces terms and has pitiful phrasing. His attempt to loosen things up by adding little comments often distorts the meaning of the message, or worse, makes it redundant and repetitive. Read this book and you will fully understand Mary’s claim that Donald Trump’s vindictive personality is driven by exposure to too much privilege and copious amounts of neglect. I won’t lay out her full premise here, but the fact there was no love in Trump’s family, unless it was connected to money, makes it easy to understand some of his negative behaviors.

No one is left unscathed in Mary Trump’s book, not even her own father. There are so many times I wanted to kick my Kindle when reading about how everyone did whatever Fred Trump wanted and now no one confronts the Donald, no one pushes back because Trump is just one, big, living lie. He’s carries with him the baggage of his inadequacies and requires and demands enormous amounts of adulation and praise. Mary Trump is right. He has not significantly advanced emotionally from a little, four-year-old child and he has the vocabulary of a 14-year-old boy.

Mary’s book is a total A+, and I believe you will agree with me after you read it. Donald Trump must be removed from the White House in January. He must be eradicated from the Presidency and sent back to New York to stand trial. After Mary L. Trump’s revelations, I would not be surprised to see many of his family members being investigated for tax fraud and other illegal activities. She offers no proof, but Mary Trump knows more than she wrote.

The book that tells it like it is…

Gold, God, Guns & Goofballs: If you only read one chapter of this book, try “Take a Knee for America” and think about our never-ending conflicts between minorities and the police. I’m not asking you to take a stand but having a deep and honest conversation about why some people think the way they do would be productive. This is a book for the moment which seeks to start a conservation about peace. And if you are worried about social media, you really should check out the chapter called “Social Media Menace.”

Get the Kindle Version HERE. Or order your paperback edition HERE.