Putin knew just where to strike the U.S., crippling us on a post-modern battlefield. Not only did he defeat the Democrats during the 2016 election, but he may be currently threatening the “winners” of the election, attempting to elicit their voluntary or involuntary cooperation…
The president is growing more erratic and dangerous by the day. Donald Trump’s sometimes subtle and often bellicose threats against Iran are on the upswing. He foments hostility at home, using civil war dog whistles that rile militia groups and rogue agents, while forecasting mob “violence” if the Republicans lose the House. Trump doubles down in his embrace of tyrants who actively spurn the free press, before creating his own fake news about hazards at the border. He secretly prepares for the potential of a new attorney general, complete with a Mueller-proof ethics-waiver, while capriciously flirting between firing or pushing AG Jeff Sessions to resign. We discussed this type of psychological unraveling in our NBC Think op-ed regarding the 25th Amendment, predicting that the president’s deterioration would hasten in response to the advancing Mueller probe. While neither of us know the president, we can confidently assert that people like Trump, with well-documented and long-standing behavior patterns consistent with narcissistic and anti-social personality disorders, are prone to becoming more paranoid, unpredictable, impulsive and dangerous when they are under extreme levels of distress.
But another danger, lurking beneath the Donald Trump horror show, is the Republican-led Congress and its failure to place appropriate checks on our nation’s executive branch. Even if the Cabinet did its job and invoked the 25th Amendment, the current Republican members of Congress would not lend their required support to relieve the president from his duties under this nation-saving measure. In addition, the GOP-led House will not impeach the president, and the Republicans in the Senate would not convict an impeached president.
