This Is Not Normal: Trump's Stunning Incoherence on Policy, Volume LXVII

I know we've all become inured to it by now to the point that it flies under the radar - but it's incredible how staggeringly ignorant and seemingly mentally deficient the current inhabitant of the white house is. He can't even make it through a softball Fox News interview without embarrassing himself

He should be in an assisted living facility. Not the White House:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/23/16522456/trump-bartiromo-transcript

On bipartisan health care reform

Well, I’ve — I have looked at it very, very strongly. And pretty much, we can do almost what they’re getting. I — I think he is a tremendous person. I don’t know Sen. Murray. I hear very, very good things.

I know that Lamar Alexander’s a fine man, and he is really in there to do good for the people. We can do pretty much what we have to do without, you know, the secretary has tremendous leeway in the — under the Obama plans. One of the things that they did, because they were so messed up, they had no choice but to give the secretary leeway because they knew he’d have to be — he or she would have to be changing all the time.

And we can pretty much do whatever we have to do just the way it is. So this was going to be temporary, prior to repeal and replace. We’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare.


On tax cuts for the wealthy

Cutting taxes on the rich, for example, is unpopular. So the White House’s plan to get tax cuts on the rich passed is to lie about it and pretend they’re actually proposing a big middle-class tax cut. Bartiromo tries to get Trump to say that, but he keeps getting distracted by his desire to tell a name-dropping story about the owner of the New England Patriots:

BARTIROMO: If the top earners pay 80 percent of the taxes, why are you so afraid to cut taxes on the top earners?

TRUMP: I think this, look, you know, I am very happy with the way I’ve done part of this in my civilian life, all right.

BARTIROMO: Of course. This is not about —

TRUMP: Other people — well, it’s about me representing rich people.

BARTIROMO: Okay.

TRUMP: Representing — being representative of rich people. Very interesting to me Bob Kraft was down. He was very nice. He owns the Patriots. He gave me a Super Bowl ring a month ago. And he —

BARTIROMO: Well, Putin took his —

TRUMP: Which was very nice. That’s right. But he left this beautiful ring, and I immediately give it to the White House and they put it some place, and that’s the way it is.

BARTIROMO: That’s great.

TRUMP: He said to me — he’s a good man. He said to me you have to do us all a favor, give the tax decrease to the middle class, we don’t need it. We don’t need it. We don’t want it. Give it to the middle class. And, I’ve had many people, very wealthy people, tell me the very same thing. I’ve had very few say I want more, I want more.

 

If he were less of a pathological narcissist - he would have handed her a Werther's Original on the way out the door.

 

By the way - this is how Trump behaves with an extremely friendly reporter from what is effectively state-run TV, who is feeding him planted questions that are designed to let him repeat his talking points - this is the softest of the softballs. Bartiromo is there to basically lay out the red carpet for him to talk up cutting the corporate tax because that's what her job is.

And he's not even...up to that, or to even trying.

Imagine how much he has slipped mentally to be in this state.

Imagine him with a more probing interviewer, or in a political debate, or in front of an attorney or a grand jury, or in a conference with a foreign leader - any adverse situation where he has to actually think.

He basically can't be allowed to even speak to others in private anymore, his capacity is that diminished. And we're 9 months into this ****.