@joker97: Are you sure you don't want to make that wager? I am now willing to bet he won't even last six months.

Trump and his Russian ties - a comprehensive listing from 1979 to the present day.

Rikkitic:

 

@joker97: Are you sure you don't want to make that wager? I am now willing to bet he won't even last six months.

 

 

I can't see him resigning though. He's got an ego the size of Texas and a brain the size of a walnut.

He doesn't have to resign. Impeachment is on the way. 

DarthKermit:

 

Rikkitic:

 

@joker97: Are you sure you don't want to make that wager? I am now willing to bet he won't even last six months.

 

 

 

I can't see him resigning though. He's got an ego the size of Texas and a brain the size of a walnut.

 

I also don't see the Republicans moving against him.

Only 40% of voters approve of the job Trump is doing to 54% who disapprove. For the first time we find more voters (48%) in support of impeaching Trump than there are (41%) opposed to the idea. Only 43% of voters think Trump is actually going to end up serving his full term as President, while 45% think he won't, and 12% aren't sure one way or the other.

 Another fascinating NYTimes article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/trump-classified-data.html?_r=0

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At certain times Donald Trump has seemed like a budding authoritarian, a corrupt Nixon, a rabble-rousing populist or a big business corporatist.

But as Trump has settled into his White House role, he has given a series of long interviews, and when you study the transcripts it becomes clear that fundamentally he is none of these things.

At base, Trump is an infantalist. There are three tasks that most mature adults have sort of figured out by the time they hit 25. Trump has mastered none of them. Immaturity is becoming the dominant note of his presidency, lack of self-control his leitmotif.

First, most adults have learned to sit still. But mentally, Trump is still a 7-year-old boy who is bouncing around the classroom. Trump’s answers in these interviews are not very long — 200 words at the high end — but he will typically flit through four or five topics before ending up with how unfair the press is to him.

His inability to focus his attention makes it hard for him to learn and master facts. He is ill informed about his own policies and tramples his own talking points. It makes it hard to control his mouth. On an impulse, he will promise a tax reform when his staff has done little of the actual work.

Second, most people of drinking age have achieved some accurate sense of themselves, some internal criteria to measure their own merits and demerits. But Trump seems to need perpetual outside approval to stabilize his sense of self, so he is perpetually desperate for approval, telling heroic fabulist tales about himself.

“In a short period of time I understood everything there was to know about health care,” he told Time. “A lot of the people have said that, some people said it was the single best speech ever made in that chamber,” he told The Associated Press, referring to his joint session speech.

By Trump’s own account, he knows more about aircraft carrier technology than the Navy. According to his interview with The Economist, he invented the phrase “priming the pump” (even though it was famous by 1933). Trump is not only trying to deceive others. His falsehoods are attempts to build a world in which he can feel good for an instant and comfortably deceive himself.

He is thus the all-time record-holder of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon in which the incompetent person is too incompetent to understand his own incompetence. Trump thought he’d be celebrated for firing James Comey. He thought his press coverage would grow wildly positive once he won the nomination. He is perpetually surprised because reality does not comport with his fantasies.

Third, by adulthood most people can perceive how others are thinking. For example, they learn subtle arts such as false modesty so they won’t be perceived as obnoxious.

But Trump seems to have not yet developed a theory of mind. Other people are black boxes that supply either affirmation or disapproval. As a result, he is weirdly transparent. He wants people to love him, so he is constantly telling interviewers that he is widely loved. In Trump’s telling, every meeting was scheduled for 15 minutes but his guests stayed two hours because they liked him so much.

Which brings us to the reports that Trump betrayed an intelligence source and leaked secrets to his Russian visitors. From all we know so far, Trump didn’t do it because he is a Russian agent, or for any malevolent intent. He did it because he is sloppy, because he lacks all impulse control, and above all because he is a 7-year-old boy desperate for the approval of those he admires.

The Russian leak story reveals one other thing, the dangerousness of a hollow man.

Our institutions depend on people who have enough engraved character traits to fulfill their assigned duties. But there is perpetually less to Trump than it appears. When we analyze a president’s utterances we tend to assume that there is some substantive process behind the words, that it’s part of some strategic intent.

But Trump’s statements don’t necessarily come from anywhere, lead anywhere or have a permanent reality beyond his wish to be liked at any given instant.

We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.

“We badly want to understand Trump, to grasp him,” David Roberts writes in Vox. “It might give us some sense of control, or at least an ability to predict what he will do next. But what if there’s nothing to understand? What if there is no there there?”

And out of that void comes a carelessness that quite possibly betrayed an intelligence source, and endangered a country.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What staggers me is that the Republican Party doesn't seem to care that this fool is making America the laughing stock of the world.

Rikkitic:

 

He doesn't have to resign. Impeachment is on the way. 

 

 

 

That requires a majority vote to pass the start of proceedings, it requires a two third vote to impeach. The Republicans have a majority so it is not likely to happen soon. If the mid term elections delivers a majority to the Democrats they could get the numbers to start impeachment but would they get the two thirds needed? 

Rikkitic:

 

Only 40% of voters approve of the job Trump is doing to 54% who disapprove. For the first time we find more voters (48%) in support of impeaching Trump than there are (41%) opposed to the idea. Only 43% of voters think Trump is actually going to end up serving his full term as President, while 45% think he won't, and 12% aren't sure one way or the other.

 

 

 

Voters don't impeach, the Senate does. 

Er, Mike, the senate is elected by voters.

Rikkitic:

 

Er, Mike, the senate is elected by voters.

 

 

 

Yep, for one third every two years. That does not mean the voters impeach, the Senate does and as we know party first, electorate second. Don't get me wrong I believe that Mr Trump needs to go but I feel the next realistic chance of that is in 2020

MikeB4:

 

Rikkitic:

 

Er, Mike, the senate is elected by voters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yep, for one third every two years. That does not mean the voters impeach, the Senate does and as we know party first, electorate second. Don't get me wrong I believe that Mr Trump needs to go but I feel the next realistic chance of that is in 2020

 

not if the democracts win control in the 2018 elections, then all bets are off

vexxxboy:

 

MikeB4:

 

Rikkitic:

 

Er, Mike, the senate is elected by voters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yep, for one third every two years. That does not mean the voters impeach, the Senate does and as we know party first, electorate second. Don't get me wrong I believe that Mr Trump needs to go but I feel the next realistic chance of that is in 2020

 

 

 

 

not if the democracts win control in the 2018 elections, then all bets are off

 

The Democrats if they get a majority can start the Impeachment process but there has to be a 2/3 majority vote to prosecute that will be hard to achieve.

I bet if  Hillery Clinton had been elected and she had done one thing that Trump has done the Republicans would be calling for impeachment..   But as it's their boy they've been very quiet about it..

NY Times, yesterday: President Trump’s True Revelation: He Is Unfit for Office

extracts:

re Trump sharing highly classified intelligence with the Russians :

"So far, Republicans in Congress repeat the mantra we heard during Mr. Trump’s campaign: that he is coachable and will mature in office. ...

"... We are seeing the real Mr. Trump. This same inattention and ignorance, vanity and foolish impulsivity nearly sunk his business - until his lenders stepped in before he took them down with him."