With Trump it has sometimes been hard to tell if he knows he’s lying. Sometimes I think he knows but doesn’t care. Sometimes I think he honestly doesn’t know. Maybe a little of both. “Truth” to him is just something to be manipulated, not something to be valued for its own sake. Plus his mind is turning into mush.
Lately I’m thinking that what he says is often just an unfiltered reflection of his id. “The id engages in primary process thinking, which is primitive, illogical, irrational, and fantasy-oriented. This form of process thinking has no comprehension of objective reality, and is selfish and wishful in nature,” it says here. He’s a deeply insecure man who got through life by using money and belligerence to seize control and keep himself safe. And now he’s terrified he’s losing control. He may not get to be president again. He may not be able to stop the legal system from taking all control away from him.
So he gets in front of a microphone and shows us how terrified he is. He’s threatening to prosecute Google for running “bad stories” about him. He attacked Fox News for carrying a speech by Harris (which surprises me). According to Trump, Fox shouldn’t be allowed to present a speech by Harris. He’s not just being irrational; I say he’s being irrational because he’s terrified. If he weren’t terrified he wouldn’t care. But he is, so he crazily lashes out because these entities are not protecting him and ceding him control. He can’t stand it.
“These people are animals” (referring to migrants).
“I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion of murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs, and vicious gang members. We’re going to liberate our country.”
“You gotta get these people back where they came from. You have no choice. You’re gonna lose your culture.”
And, finally, this gem: “They will walk into your kitchen, they’ll cut your throat.”
In Trump’s rhetoric, vast hoards of subhuman brown people may already be swarming through innocent midwestern communities, raping and pillaging and taking over homes while tossing the lifeless bodies of homeowners into dumptsters. You may not be seeing that on the news, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. And if you don’t elect him, Kamala Harris will see to it it happens to you.
And, of course, none of this is real, but his followers believe him.
What I suspect is that what he’s really expressing is his own existential angst, his own fear that without the power of the presidency the Justice Department will take everything away from him. His homes, his golf courses, everthing. He’ll be tossed out and into prison. FBI agents will come for him, and life as he knows it will be over.
And then there’s his new ramble on crime, in which he fantacizes that just letting the police bring the hammer down for one day — or just “one rough hour,” — would end crime. This is of a piece with his fantasy about being “a dictator on day one.” Just give him unlimited power to do anything, and he’ll take care of all of his problems and destroy the things that scare him.
And if his poll numbers sag further, or Judge Chutkan releases incriminating information from Jack Smith’s recent super-brief, expect him to get crazier.
Update: This is Jonathan Chait, Trump Wants to Lock Up Kamala Harris Now He’s now three-for-three in demanding imprisonment of opposing candidates
Over the weekend, Donald Trump began branding Vice-President Kamala Harris a criminal. “She should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions,” he claimed at one point. At another, he ostentatiously paused his speech while the crowd chanted, “Lock her up!”
It is obviously unsurprising that Trump would conjure up imaginary crimes by his political opponent. In 2016, he made “Lock her up!” a signature campaign chant. In 2020, he branded Joe Biden a criminal. The pretext for Harris’s prosecution is that, as vice-president, she presided over border-enforcement policies that Trump opposes. In 2016, the pretext was Clinton’s violation of State Department email protocol. In 2020, it was disproven charges that Biden profited from his son’s business activity in Ukraine.
Obviously, none of the particulars of these allegations — in Harris’s case, Trump hasn’t even managed to manufacture a pretextual criminal allegation — matter to Trump in the slightest. His view of the law is fully relativist. Actions taken on Trump’s behalf are by inherently legal, and actions taken against him are inherently illegal.
That is why Trump continuously brands his political opponents as criminals. In addition to all three of his Democratic campaign opponents, Trump has called for criminal charges to be brought against a long list of targets, including (but not limited to) Barack Obama, John Kerry, Liz Cheney, anybody who criticizes pro-Trump judges, “lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, and corrupt election officials” involved in the 2024 election, among many others. …
… Trump’s view of crime, as an activity that definitionally encompasses all political or media activity disadvantageous to him and excluding all activity by him or his allies, is so extreme that few of his allies will defend it on its own terms. Sometimes they insist his personalistic view of the justice system is not a reason to exclude him from office, since his efforts to implement failed more than they succeeded in the first term.
At this point I’m not sure he fully grasps the contept of “law.”
In other news, recently Trump has been promising no taxes on tips and also no taxes on overtime. (Harris has also taken up no taxes on tips, with the provision that this only applies to service workers. Otherwise certain highly compensated professionals could reclassify parts of their income as tips.) But in a recent speech he confessed that as an employer he refused to pay overtime.
Former president and current GOP nominee Donald Trump on Sunday admitted he “hated” to pay his staff overtime and would instead replace them with other workers to avoid doing so.
Trump’s confession came during a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, after promising to deliver “gigantic tax cuts” via his pledge to end the tax on tips, overtime and social security benefits for seniors.
“I know a lot about overtime. I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I’d get other people, I shouldn’t say this, but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay,” Trump boasted.
He said this right after he promised “no taxes on overtime.” Why would he have said this? It’s another sign that the guardrails in his brain are gone. He just says whatever pops into his mind. He can’t stop himself. So, yeah, no taxes on overtime, but good luck ever getting any overtime. Note that Project 2025 calls for big restrictions on overtime. See also Steve Benen.
Hurricane Helene did a number on western North Carolina and some other places. Now comes the political fallout.
At a rally Friday in Walker, Mich., Trump said he was thinking of those in Alabama and other states hit by the storm. “We’re with you all the way, and if we were there, we’d be helping you,” he said. “You’ll be okay.”
KamalaHQ, the Harris campaign’s X account, immediately shared the video clip with its roughly 1.3 million followers, suggesting that the former president was downplaying a deadly disaster and showing a lack of empathy.
“You’ll be okay,” the tweet read, along with the parenthetical note, “(Dozens of deaths have already been reported).”
Plus, Project 2025 calls for doing away with the National Weather Service (what idiots come up with this?). And, of course, since the hurricane Trump has repeated his belief that climate change is a hoax. I do agree with this Daily Kos poster that Harris needs to show up in North Carolina if at all possible. There are reasons why she needs to stay away if she can’t go without a huge entourae, of course. But keep an eye on this. Trump will turn it into a “who cares more” competition.
The Vice President Debate happens tomorrow night. I’ll be here with an open thread if anyone wants to join me.
I just saw this. Worth watching.