"The comment from the Feds is absurd. These are car-sized drones that have flown over New Jersey, New York, and military bases in Virginia."

"If the Feds know who is doing this, they should say so. If they don't know, they should say that. To say that they 'pose no threat,' but we can't tell you what they are is the height of bureaucratic arrogance."

That's the most sensible comment at the WaPo column "New Jersey needs to get a grip. But our drone defenses need work. There’s no need to panic about drones." The column — not the comment, the column — is by Max Boot.

And here's the statement from the Feds the commenter is reacting to: "We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus."

And then there's this:

Yes father, use grok to generate an image of the New Jersey drones delivering McDonalds to that fat slob Chris Christie.

Perfect, now post it on 𝕏 https://t.co/gvnetk4faA pic.twitter.com/JbRCvjRgDo

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) December 14, 2024

I didn't blog this yesterday because I thought Trump's Fight, Fight, Fight cologne was just a joke.

It is funny, but the product is apparently real:

It's possible that the product idea was created in response to the glorious photographs of Jill Biden seemingly flirting with Donald Trump at the Notre Dame festivities in Paris. I see news articles from 2 days ago saying that Trump had just "launched" the product. So I'm thinking first came this hilarious idea for a fake ad and then came the idea that it can be an actual product.

Because, look, that bottle is completely basic — it's not shaped like an upraised fist — and the lettering is very plain and the product name is close to the first thing you'd think of.

It's like an episode of "The Apprentice." Here are these photographs of the President's wife adoring the former President. Your challenge is to design a Trump-branded product and to use one of the photographs in an ad campaign. 

The joke alone would have been great, but the idea of turning it into a money stream like this is brilliant. Now you know what to get your Trump loving dad Christmas... even though it's utterly well known that Dad never wants cologne.

Trump has caused the New York Times to write a front page article about his purported positivity about performing a perp walk!

I'm laughing while trying to force myself to read "Trump at Mar-a-Lago: Magical Thinking and a Perp-Walk Fixation/Those who have spent time with Donald Trump in recent days say he has often appeared significantly disconnected from the severity of his potential legal woes."

See? Their idea is that he's crazy and delusional and out of touch with reality. Do they even consider that he's playing them and just doing what he always does and making the best of whatever misfortune comes his way? It's just media judo. Can't they recognize it by now?

Oh, I'll give them credit. They recognize it, they just also keep doing what they do, characterizing Trump's genius/"genius" moves as craziness.

And I say that even as I do what I always do: read the NYT in the morning. But I'm going to give myself credit for not reading this article. Not yet, anyway. Am I missing something?

"According to a new book, Obama called Trump a 'madman,' a 'racist, sexist pig,' 'that fucking lunatic' and a 'corrupt motherfucker.'"

 The Guardian reports. 

The book is "Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Donald Trump" by Edward-Isaac Dovere. This is the same book that quotes Jill Biden saying that Kamala Harris should "go fuck herself."

According to the article, Dovere writes that Obama preferred Trump over Ted Cruz as the candidate, because he thought Cruz is much smarter than Trump. To that, I'd say that there are different forms of intelligence — Obama ought to know — and Cruz has strong conventional indicia of intelligence but Trump is some sort of genius. The challenge is to have enough intelligence of your own to discern what field of human endeavor is the dimension of Trump's genius. If you fall short, you will find Trump is a big idiot.

Later, Obama — speaking to "big donors" — said Trump  is "a madman." 

Obama also said things like "I didn’t think it would be this bad," "I didn’t think we’d have a racist, sexist pig," and "that fucking lunatic." I consider all those statements meaningless fluff... other than the "I didn't think," which I regard as Obama's excuse for not using his clout against Trump. Why give Obama money now when he didn't even help get Hillary elected?

"Why do none of Trump’s ‘jokes’ feel like jokes?"

A column by Richard Zoglin in WaPo. And if you're jumping to answer the question with something like they're not funny to people who hate Trump or who are the butt of his jokes, you're wrong. Zoglin — author of "Elvis in Vegas: How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show" and "Hope: Entertainer of the Century" — has something way more interesting and — as far as comedy matters go — erudite.

Zoglin looks at some important Trump jokes/"jokes": 1. "When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please,’ ”  2. (about Hillary's emails) "Russia, if you’re listening,” 3. (about police putting arrestees in squad cars) “Don’t be too nice,” 4. whatever he said about injecting disinfectant, and 5. challenging Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to an IQ test.

Zoglin says Trump is using an "avant-garde and subtle" form of humor!

Trump’s chief model, it seems to me, is the deadpan performance-art comedy of people such as Andy Kaufman and Sacha Baron Cohen. They created elaborate put-on characters, like Kaufman’s obnoxious lounge-lizard Tony Clifton or Cohen’s blundering Kazakh journalist, Borat.

The key to pulling off this sort of comedy is to stick with the ruse, to stay in character, to dupe the audience for as long as possible....

Trump, the Tony Clifton of presidents, has proved equally adept at sustaining the put-on. He never breaks character. He never laughs at his own jokes (or anyone else’s, for that matter). On those rare occasions when he feels compelled to backtrack from an especially ridiculous comment, he does so with a scripted monotone of can’t-miss-it insincerity.

[Some things Trump says] make sense only as performance art. And in that respect, Trump is peerless. Even Tony Clifton and Borat couldn’t keep their acts running for four years straight.

If you buy the theory that Trump is doing performance art... what a great artist!

"If Trump owned a media company, which advisors say he discussed when he believed he would lose the 2016 election, it might look something like 'Team Trump Online'..."

"... the current production. And if he or his family start one after he leaves the White House, this could be the pilot. 'This is the warm-up act,' said Frank Sesno, a former CNN anchor and the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. 'There's nothing he would like more than to throw his name on a channel, a digital brand'.... Biden, also hoping to reach supporters during the coronavirus shutdown, has a podcast called 'Here's the Deal' and appears at times on YouTube. But the Trump channel is on almost nightly, while Biden's shows are intermittent... [T]he content on Trump TV is purer, if a bit clunkier, than even on avowedly pro-Trump OANN. And the hosts are closer to Trump's inner circle. They include Donald Jr., his girlfriend and former Fox host Kimberly Guilfoyle, the president's daughter-in-law Lara Trump, and a small group of campaign officials and surrogates in the tight-knit Trump family troupe.... [U]nlike 'The View,' which has one conservative panelist to spark tension and debate, 'The Right View' hosts never disagree as they review current events. In a recent episode, they took turns blaming Biden 'for the dangerous "Defund the Police" movement.' The former vice president has specifically rejected calls to defund police.... 'Imagine what we would live in in Biden’s America — with open borders, no police and 'CornPop' on the radio,' [Katrina] Pierson said... Lara Trump laughed, and Guilfoyle, on a separate screen, smiled and said she can't get 'CornPop' out of her head...."

From "Trump gets an all-Trump channel. It could be his future" (MSN (originally L.A. Times)).

It sounds perfectly awful, but I think all the usual cable news channels are awful. As for network news — I never look at it. Haven't watched it since the 80s.

I have been assuming that if Trump loses the election, he will go on to found a significant media organization. I'm willing to believe he is some kind of media genius — "The Apprentice" and the 2016 political victory and his wild Twitter persona prove he is — and I think he's better at that and more suited to that than he is at being President. If he wins in 2020, he can never run again. He will be, forever, not a candidate. But if he loses, he can run again. From the sidelines, he can attack the new President and really swing freely. He can tease a 2024 run for the presidency the entire time and we can watch that crystalize (or not). He will be in his element.

But reading about Trump TV, I think: Where's the genius? This sounds awful. And yet, I don't expect the L.A. Times to make anything Trump does sound good. I could watch a little Trump TV myself, but to tell you the truth, I googled and I couldn't find it. Is there some internet conspiracy to hide it? Whatever. I don't really want to spend time watching this stuff, and I don't think what it is now proves what it will be once Trump is out of the White House and into the enterprise of building a media empire.

ADDED: I guess this is the YouTube channel. That's just the "Donald J Trump" YouTube page. There's no YouTube channel called "Team Trump Online." Not that I could find.

Click on this WaPo link to see a photograph of Chuck Schumer exiting the Senate chamber while holding an N95 disposable respirator in his hand, with his middle finger on the inside...

... and walking past a woman — an assistant or guard of some kind? — who is wearing a disposable surgical mask.

Here: "House pushes toward historic change in voting procedures as pandemic sidelines Congress."

Such an unpleasant look for him. Either wear the mask or don't. And why are these people using the medical supplies and not the washable cloth mask they tell us to wear? And how inept is it to put your finger on the inside? That's actually quite gross even in times of plentiful supplies.

I've already been thinking that much of this mask business is theater, but they're not even getting the theater right.

I've saved the image — a photo by Patrick Semansky/AP — in case WaPo thinks better of its choice and replaces it.

I'm not going to call Schumer an idiot — the way Trump haters call Trump an idiot — because I happen to know that he scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT and was his high school's valedictorian. He went to Harvard undergrad and for law school. I'm seeing his IQ estimated at 170. He's super-smart. There's no doubt about it. I'm watching what he does, and he's not taking the risk of contagion too seriously. He's in a vulnerable group too — he's 69 years old (the same as me).

Having written that, I wanted to see what IQ people assign to Donald Trump. Of course, it's all over the place. He's an idiot! He's a genius! But at Quora, I found this interesting answer — by Tony Reno in June 2017 — to the question "To all those with IQ above 135, how high do you suspect Donald Trump’s IQ to be?"

"President Donald Trump on Friday dismissed the need for additional help in countering Democrats' impeachment efforts..."

"... despite pleas from outside advisers for a more coordinated response from the White House. In a comment reminiscent of his 'I alone can fix it' declaration in accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, Trump told reporters gathered on the White House South Lawn that he will be the one leading the fight when it comes to responding to impeachment. 'Here's the thing. I don't have teams, everyone's talking about teams,' Trump said. 'I'm the team. I did nothing wrong.' Trump's allies have been imploring the White House to develop a more organized structure.... A number have suggested Trump follow the war-room model set up by the Clinton White House...."

NBC News reports.

Just because he says "I don't have teams... I'm the team" doesn't mean he's the "I alone" guy. It just means he wants that image. It goes along with "I did nothing wrong": "I'm the team. I did nothing wrong." Those 2 thoughts go together because... people who hear them merge them into a demonstration of a clean conscience. But in real life, you can be innocent and stumble into saying and doing things that your antagonists can use to convict you.

Most people know the the saying, a man who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client. Who said that?

"I don't think he's, intellectually, a powerhouse but he is basically a very, very smart man. No matter what the subject..."

"... any argument he involves himself in, it's on his terms. You're always arguing against him. He never, never, is willing to debate an issue on terms that aren't his."

Said Harry Reid, quoted in "Harry Reid warns Democrats: Trump is a 'very, very smart man' who won't be easily beaten in 2020" (CNN).

"Thank you Joe and remember, the BRAIN is much sharper also!" tweeted Trump...

... in response to something Joe Scarborough, who'd said that Trump "looks like he’s about 20 years younger than a lot of Democratic candidates" (reported at Politico).

ADDED: Notice that Trump said "the BRAIN is much sharper," not "my BRAIN is much sharper." Remember, yesterday we were talking about "the geriatric possessive," how old people tend to say "I’m going to take my bath" and "take my walk" and "take my nap" rather than referring to baths and walks and naps and so on generally, without using a pronoun to highlight that the thing in question is theirs, which is what younger people do. Look at Trump — old but not seeming old — he doesn't even say "my brain." He says "the brain."

AND: Speaking of Trump's looks, here's something from the new Howard Stern book, from an April 2004 interview:

Caller: In a hypothetical situation—I mean, saying you’re not involved with Melania and there was no ethical backgrounds for business and whatnot—how many of those bitches [on "The Apprentice"] do you think you could’ve banged?

Howard: Good question.

Donald: Boy, I’ll tell ya. I love the thought, I’ll tell you that. ’Cause they were attractive. Do you agree with that?

Howard: I mean, some of the bodies on them while they were sitting there . . .

Donald: They were amazing.

Howard: Which is more important: talent or looking great?

Donald: Looking great.

Howard: I agree.

Donald: I’ve had both, and I’ll take looking great.

PLUS: Meade corrects my interpretation of "I’ve had both, and I’ll take looking great." He says Trump was talking about the women. I completely believed he'd switched over to talking about himself and he was looking back on the time when he was beautiful. I read the interview last night and saw it that way and went looking for it this morning because I saw it that way, and I published the quote without even seeing the ambiguity, I was so attached to that interpretation. I now believe that he meant the women — he's "had" women — and I find that so much less interesting.

SO: Now, I'm thinking about the word "had." You have your own brain, whether you call it "my brain" or not. You can use "had" to talk about the sexual partners you've had without needing to say "sex." Just say "had." To say "I've been had" means you've been tricked, and a sexual partner can be called a "trick." Of course, I look up "had" in the OED, and talk about ridiculously long entries. Try reading "have, v." It's long! I begin to laugh at myself for even trying, but then it jumps out at me:

13. transitive. a. To gain sexual possession of (esp. a woman); to have sexual intercourse with....

It goes back to Old English: "Þa het he feccan him to þa abbedessan on Leomynstre & hæfde hi þa while þe him geliste." Of course, there is Shakespeare: "Was euer woman in this humor woed, Was euer woman in this humor wonne: Ile haue her, but I will not keepe her long" ("Richard III"). Henry Fielding: "'None of your Coquet Airs, therefore, with me, Madam,’ said he, ‘for I am resolved to have you this Night.'" Keats: "I should have had her when I was in health, and I should have remained well." And — we need a woman — Judith Krantz in "Scruples" (1978): "They cherished not having had each other because it created a current of continual warmth which... was more important to them than sex." Ha, the woman is about not having.

"Maybe, in fact, Trump is the genius he claims to be, possessed — as he likes to boast — of a 'very good brain.'"

"O.K., I don’t quite believe that. But going forward, it would be wise for all of his inveterate critics in the news media, including me, to treat it as our operating assumption. The alternative is to let him hand us our butts all over again, just as he did by winning the G.O.P. nomination and then the election, and then by presiding over years of robust economic growth. That should be the central lesson from the epic media fiasco of Russiagate."

Writes Bret Stephens in "Is Trump Keyser Söze — Or Inspector Clouseau?/Maybe the president brilliantly played the media. Or maybe we just played ourselves" (NYT).

The NYT struggles to cheer up the anti-Trumpsters with "Bad Times in Trumpville."

Bad times? How can that be?

Gail Collins writes:

I know some of you were very sad about the way the Mueller report let Donald Trump off the hook. Even if you secretly doubted that he was actually well-organized enough to run an international conspiracy, it made you depressed to see him looking so happy.

But then he took off on the worst victory lap since — well, do you remember that baseball player who celebrated his grand slam home run by leaping in the air and fracturing a leg?

“We’re not talking about health care right now, but I will,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.

He also vowed to make the Republicans “the party of health care.” Great strategy!

And here we go again, presuming Trump does everything wrong... because you so much want him to be wrong. What if those thoughts he's causing you to have — thoughts about what an utter screw-up he is — are part of his genius way of winning?

What Gov. Northam did was "unforgivable" Trump says... but look at what he's calling "unforgivable."

Democrat Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia just stated, “I believe that I am not either of the people in that photo.” This was 24 hours after apologizing for appearing in the picture and after making the most horrible statement on “super” late term abortion. Unforgivable!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2019

What is Trump calling unforgivable?

Theory #1: What's unforgivable is the tight cluster of poor expression. In quick succession, Northam said something about late-term abortion that sounded as though he meant that a woman could have her born child euthanized if its existence interfered with her mental health, then he apologized for appearing in the blackface-and-Klansman photograph, and then he withdrew his confession that he is one of the men in the photograph. It's a mind-boggling botching of communications, and there's no amount of better communication that can undo the evidence he has created of his own radical incompetence to serve in a role of important trust for the people of Virginia. No kindheartedness or belief in redemption should motivate us to forgive him. We're not saying he can't go to heaven or that his friends and family ought to shun him. It's just that he can't rehabilitate himself as governor.

Theory #2: Based on what we know about Northam's soul — having something to do with that photograph and something to do with beliefs about abortion — we should judge him and declare him unforgivable. Trump identifies as Christian, and Christianity is widely understood to reveal that even the worst person can receive forgiveness, but Trump meant to say that it is impossible for Northam to be forgiven.

Theory #3: With respect to the photograph, Northam provided a written apology and a long press conference, but (as Trump sees it) he hasn't really walked back his endorsement of super-late-term abortions. (He's only said, I believe, that he meant to refer to allowing a badly disabled baby to die.) What's unforgivable is thinking that a decades-old expression of racism is a more serious matter than a present-day statement that you want to legalize the killing of infants after they are born.

Theory #4: Trump doesn't actually think Northam is unforgivable. He just needed to end his tweet with an exclamation, and he could just as well have written "Ridiculous!" or "Terrible!" Trump swings a bit wildly, but the people he's reaching get it, and the big idea is there: Democrat bad.

Theory #5: I'm adding this after reading the post to Meade. This is a verbatim quote from Meade: "Above all else Trump is a media genius, and what Northam is asking for is for us to let him off the front page, and that's what his groveling is all about, and that's what Trump is focusing on. Not so fast. You need to stay on the front page."

"Trump Caves!"

So said the headlines — of left-wing media and right-wing media. But some righties are working on the "Genius!" theory.

I'm reading "‘Trump caves’ or ‘Genius’: Right wing splits after Trump ends shutdown with no wall funding" in the "Internet Culture" section of The Washington Post.

What exactly is the Genius! interpretation here? I know there will be one, and I was trying to sketch it out in my head, but I decided what the hell!, I have better things to do and so many people are going to work on this theory that what do you need me for on this project?

Fox News host Sean Hannity [said] “Anyone out there thinking President Trump caved today, you don’t know the Donald Trump I know.... He right now holds all the cards — he will secure the border one way or another.”

On pro-Trump subreddit r/The_Donald, users rallied to justify Trump’s announcement. A top post on the forum on Friday afternoon declared: “What President Trump did today was show that Democrats would rather starve government employees and watch our airlines crash to the ground rather than have meaningful border security. 3 Weeks. The Wall Is Coming!”

WaPo doesn't link to r/The_Donald, so I will. I see they have a rule — Rule #6 — "Trump Supporters Only. No Cucks or Leftists."

Here's the vibe there:

This might be the most positive presentation of Trump I've ever seen in the New York Times.

This is the lead article at the NYT website right now:

A single author, Carl Hulse, begins:

The trick in Washington has always been to make sure a government shutdown is pinned on the other guy. President Trump is the first to ever pin one on himself.

In a new twist on the old game of shutdown politics dating to the 1990s, Mr. Trump was essentially goaded on Tuesday by Representative Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York into embracing ownership of a shutdown yet to come if Democrats do not accede to his request for $5 billion to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico.

Pelosi and Schumer "goaded" him into that position? I read it as: Trump surprised Pelosi and Schumer with a move that they had no planned response for. Trump took the lead. In Hulse's telling, Trump was pushed.

“I will take the mantle,” Mr. Trump told the two Democratic leaders in the Oval Office, saying he would proudly close parts of the executive branch if he did not get his way. “I’m not going to blame you for it,” he continued. “The last time you shut it down, it didn’t work. I will take the mantle of shutting down, and I’m going to shut it down for border security.”

A smiling Mr. Schumer seemed more than satisfied with Mr. Trump’s retort. “O.K., fair enough,” he said.

So Schumer subtly enjoyed a little victory. In a good negotiation, perhaps, you get the other guy to feel buoyed by a sense of winning. But who's who? They can't all win, can they?

The moment was a little reminiscent of the climactic scene in “A Few Good Men,” when Tom Cruise’s character elicits an incriminating answer from Jack Nicholson’s Marine colonel. In this case, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer were more than happy to handle the president’s truth. Ms. Pelosi couldn’t say the term “Trump shutdown” enough times.

If I had just written "Mr. Schumer seemed more than satisfied," I would not proceed to say "Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer were more than happy." ("More than happy" is especially bad. It's a cliché, and for some of us, it's a cue to go looking for that old George Carlin clip.)

Anyway, casting Nancy and Chuck as Tom Cruise is a funny image. Remember, though, "A Few Good Men" is a movie, with a script that determined the ending. In the Nancy/Chuck versus Donald showdown, the American people will get whatever ideas they want — massaged by the media they select.

What I notice is that Trump played the media yesterday. He kept a negotiation going on in front of the cameras, even as Pelosi requested that the press go away. The media might like to take direction from Pelosi, but they're not going to turn away from the fantastic theater that Trump was putting on for them. Now, the video is out there, and the only thing the media can do is interpret and frame. The NYT idea is that Pelosi and Schumer were running the show. If they were, why were they the ones who wanted the cameras turned off?

In the 7th paragraph, Hulse says the things that suit the Trump-positive headline ("Playing by His Own Rules, Trump Flips the Shutdown Script"):

Mr. Trump has consistently played by his own rules in Washington, and perhaps this is just one more example of how he can upend the conventions of the capital and win a shutdown showdown on his own terms. Many of his most enthusiastic supporters are both anti-Washington and pro-border wall, so his decision to potentially close down a section of the federal government to secure funding for the wall could play well with them. It could also generate some welcome backing from his base at a time when he seems under siege on the legal end and is struggling to staff his administration as the two-year mark nears. In addition, the 2020 campaign is already on the president’s mind, and his efforts to limit immigration have worked for him in the past....

Politicians with more experience in government shutdowns aren’t so sure that is a good idea....

I know! We've been hearing from Politicians With More Experience ever since Trump brought his unique instincts into their domain. As Trump likes to say, we'll see what happens.

"In all fairness, Nancy Pelosi deserves to be chosen Speaker of the House by the Democrats."

"If they give her a hard time, perhaps we will add some Republican votes. She has earned this great honor!"

Another cagey Trump tweet.

ADDED: I think Trump will enjoy this phase of the game. It was getting boring for him. The dealmaking needs to be more complex to be at the level of The Artist of the Deal. Whether he figures out clever moves or not, his antagonists will always fear his strange tricks, and that fear alone may trip them up.

"[R]egardless of the effectiveness of [Kanye] West’s precise words, he does represent something — and that something is frightening to Democrats."

"Heaven forbid a successful, independent, young African American with a huge social media following would get out of line and gleefully support Trump. Watching the liberals panic has been kind of fun.... CNN’s coverage was particularly hysterical, alarming and insulting. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) went so far as to question West’s sanity for meeting with the president. 'I felt like I was sitting in on a psychiatrist visit and a commercial for Donald Trump,' she said. Eager to pile on, CNN host Don Lemon ranted against West on Thursday, saying he put on a 'minstrel show' for the president, in essence questioning the legitimacy of West’s blackness. Even before West’s Oval Office meeting, CNN commentator Tara Setmayer said, 'He’s the token Negro of the Trump administration.' Another CNN commentator, Bakari Sellers, in an apparently botched and distasteful reference to a decades-old Chris Rock bit, said, 'Kanye West is what happens when Negros don’t read.'... All of this kind of reminds me of the infamous 2009 'beer summit' when President Barack Obama convened a Harvard professor and Cambridge police officer to discuss race relations and racial profiling. But that gathering accomplished nothing aside from providing the media with a feeding frenzy of contrived coverage. So if Obama could have his beer summit to do nothing, Trump and West can meet in order to stir the pot and see what happens. This will be interesting to watch. I hope the Trump and Kanye show continues."

Writes Ed Rogers at WaPo. Rogers is a GOP consultant who worked in the Reagan and the George H.W. Bush administrations. I quoted him because he summed up the CNN coverage concisely, and because he's right that the Democrats are not helping themselves by making such a big deal out of the West-Trump meeting and inviting disrespect for West. But Rogers's leaning back and enjoying the "show" isn't much different from Don Lemon's calling it a "show" (except that Don Lemon, tappng his own racial privilege as a black man, called it a "minstrel show").

Here's a Jonathan Chait piece from July 2017: "I Have Found America’s Worst Columnist" ("Ed Rogers is a Washington lobbyist, and, for reasons I have never been able to discern, a regular op-ed columnist for the Washington Post.... First, as founding member of a lobbying firm with a wide-ranging portfolio and a presumably enormous income, literally everything he writes suffers from crippling conflicts of interest. Second, he is a terrible writer whose arguments lack any originality, persuasive power or, quite often, even facial plausibility").

I don't know about that, but here's what I'm thinking about Kanye West and Trump. West is an artist. Words flow out of him in a way that doesn't make you want to give him any political responsibility but that reaches your emotions. You can distance him and laugh at him and deem him crazy. But you can also be with him and hear him and love him, which is what Trump did. We watched West open up to Trump, trust Trump with his inner, artistic self, and we watched Trump accepting that connection and intimacy. Trump gave West access to the Oval Office, and West determined how to use that access, and Trump let West happen in his presence. Many onlookers felt uncomfortable, but they are, perhaps, condemned by their own discomfort.

I'm going to give this my "Trump's genius" tag.

A new WaPo trend — giving Trump credit?

It takes 4 journalists to see it, but, apparently....



... Trump isn't an impetuous, wildly swinging idiot. What if he is what he says, a political genius?

Let's see how far the WaPo journalists go:

"Nobody knows when Trump is doing international diplomacy and when he is doing election campaigning in Montana."

"It is difficult to decode what policy the American president is promoting. There is a complete unpredictability in this, and one of the things you need in this alliance is predictability towards Russia."

Said Danish defense minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen, complaining about "uncertainty," because Trump "plays in a completely different way than the rest of us."

Quoted in "'Very stable' Trump? European leaders beg to differ/The president’s wild shifts in tone left many NATO allies concluding no hidden strategy lies behind his unpredictability."

Trump, as the headline notes, repeated his joke/boast/opinion that he's "a very stable genius." That came when a Croatian journalist asked him: "We understand your message, but some people ask themselves, will you be tweeting differently once you board the Air Force One?" Trump's answer was: "No, that's other people that do that. I don’t. I’m very consistent. I’m a very stable genius."

ALSO:

A senior NATO official said leaders had concluded that they simply could not rely on anything Trump said. “You know the way he speaks, you cannot take him literally,” the official said.

Another EU official echoed the point. “He speaks a language that doesn’t match with diplomacy,” the second official said. “We were used to the Brits, who speak a more frank diplomatic language, but this is another thing.”...

But for evidence that he is, in fact, a “genius,” Trump might point to the closing assessment of NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg... “All allies have heard President Trump’s message loud and clear. We understand that this American president is very serious about defense spending... There is a new sense of urgency due to President Trump’s strong leadership on defense spending.”

AND: Retweeted by Trump:

.@realDonaldTrump's shadow is reflected on the wall as he makes a statement and answers questions as he departs the NATO Summit in Brussels, Belgium. Also reflected is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton. pic.twitter.com/5kDKWplpH4

— Doug Mills (@dougmillsnyt) July 12, 2018

IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd wrote:

Trump: You have to start paying what you agreed to pay.

Diplomats huddle up: What does he mean? I don't know. I've never heard this kind of language before. Neither have I. I'm baffled. It makes no sense. He can't possibly think any of us would actually pay our... No, I don't think so. No one would. Well what then? I must admit, I'm completely at sea.

"President Donald Trump said he wants to meet with NFL players and other athletes who kneel during the National Anthem so they can recommend people they think should be pardoned due to unfair treatment by the justice system."

"In what he seemingly sees a solution, President Donald Trump said he wants NFL players and other athletes who kneeled during the National Anthem," CNN report-opines.

"Seemingly sees"... I'm enjoying that confusion. What Trump is doing here is using lateral thinking. You don't go directly for a solution. You take a different angle. This is the stable genius par excellence.

Here's the Wikipedia entry for "lateral thinking":

Lateral thinking is solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. The term was promulgated in 1967 by Edward de Bono. He cites as an example the Judgment of Solomon, where King Solomon resolves a dispute over the parentage of a child by calling for the child to be cut in half, and making his judgment according to the reactions that this order receives....

To understand lateral thinking, it is necessary to compare lateral thinking and critical thinking. Critical thinking is primarily concerned with judging the true value of statements and seeking errors. Lateral thinking is more concerned with the "movement value" of statements and ideas. A person uses lateral thinking to move from one known idea to creating new ideas....

It's possible that lateral thinking could be especially appealing to black people, at least that's what occurs to me after reading this piece by Katherine Timpf in National Review about a college course that teaches that supposedly teaches that "objectivity" is a "white mythology." The course — according to its official description — looks at "systematic logics that position ‘the West’ and ‘whiteness’ as the ideal manifest through such social constructions as objectivity, meritocracy, and race." The National Review calls that "crazy."

I'd say it's objectively true that some people think that stressing "objectivity" is a power move associated with white males. How do you reach people who feel like that? If you think the answer is by continuing to pressure them in the way that feels white-privileged, then you have lost touch with the real world of human beings.

Timpf writes:

The idea that objectivity is somehow a myth, or that it has anything even remotely to do with “whiteness,” is so absolutely stupid that I feel like I don’t even have to spend time explaining why. 

Well, ironically, that's an emotional reaction to a misreading of a text. The course description doesn't really mean that objectivity is a myth, but that people in power use claims of their own objectivity to solidify and extend their power. I'd say that's so obvious that I feel like I don’t even have to spend time explaining why. Timpf goes on to snark that "water is objectively wet," which must feel comfortable and cleansing but says little about how the human mind works and how some human beings gain and keep power over others.

AND: At Debate.org (whatever that is) the question "Is water wet?" is polling at 49% "yes" and 51% "no." "No" might be winning because it's more interesting, but check out some of the arguments! For example:

Water isn’t wet Wet is what you would use to describe the feeling of water, not what it is. Things become wet after it’s been “touched” by water not while it is being “touched”. Water makes things wet but it is not wet itself. I get when you say “water is wet” but your not stating something, you’re just describing water.

And:

Just going to give you words from a scientist's pen. Back in the old days, when water was where we needed to spend our time, touch was a lot more important than it is now. We as beings had to be immediately aware if we were going in or out of water. Therefore, the feeling of wet is a primal sensory reminder.

However, thereafter once we ascended onto the land and trees, the feeling of wet became a sensory reminder of something out of the ordinary; it is raining - get shelter, you fell in a creek - start swimming.

The reason it feels as it feels when water touches the skin is actually a complex electro-chemical reaction which works at amazing speeds. The sensory inputs are a combination of:

1. Your body's pH at that moment
2. The water's pH
3. Your body's temperature at that moment
4. The water's temperature
5. The atmospheric pressure
6. Molecular polarity

This makes me think about the famous David Foster Wallace essay, "This is Water," which begins:

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how's the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

I'm thinking of other dialogue for Wallace's fish, like:

"You know how you feel wet?"

"Wet?! What are you talking about? I feel... the same... all the time!"