Friday, July 10, 2020

Trump Brags That Doctors Were Surprised He Passed A Dementia Screening Test

Donald Trump boasted that doctors were surprised when he passed a cognitive test used to screen for dementia. (That's not the humblebrag he thinks it is.)
I actually took one very recently when I was — when the radical left was saying is he all there, is he all there? I proved I was all there because I aced it. I aced the test and he [Joe Biden] should take the same exact test. A very standard test. I took it at Walter Reed, a medical center in front of doctors, and they were very surprised. They said, that's an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anybody do what you did.
In the last month, Donald Trump has also publicly bragged about drinking a glass of water with one hand. And his press secretary has insisted to reporters that Trump "does read". ... Which is all completely normal.
The New York Times' headline: "Trump Says He 'Aced' Cognitive Test, But White House Won't Release Details"

Fear not. This person found Trump's test!
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It will not surprise you to learn that Trump is a big fucking crybaby, pretty much 24/7 these days.

The Washington Post says Trump is inflicting self-pitying rants on everyone he sees.
The president rants about the deadly coronavirus destroying "the greatest economy," one he claims to have personally built. He laments the unfair "fake news" media, which he vents never gives him any credit. And he bemoans the "sick, twisted" police officers in Minneapolis, whose killing of an unarmed black man in their custody provoked the nationwide racial justice protests that have confounded the president. ...

Trump often launches into a monologue placing himself at the center of the nation's turmoil. The president has cast himself in the starring role of the blameless victim — of a deadly pandemic, of a stalled economy, of deep-seated racial unrest, all of which happened to him rather than the country.

Trump put his self-victimization on public display Thursday in response to a Supreme Court ruling rejecting his claim of absolute immunity and permitting a New York prosecutor to see the president's private and business financial records.

Trump reacted with a social media meltdown, writing on Twitter, "PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!" and "POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!" He wrote that the decision was "Not fair to this Presidency" and claimed that "Courts in the past have given 'broad deference'. BUT NOT ME!" ...

[H]is self-victimization tendencies are not a new phenomenon ... But those characteristics have been especially pronounced this summer, revealing themselves almost daily in everything from private conversations to public tweets ...

Barbara Res, a former executive at the Trump Organization, said that when she worked for Trump, he interpreted nearly everything in deeply personal terms.

"Whatever bad happened, no matter what it was, it was always against him, always directed at him," Res said. "He would say, 'Why does everything always happen to me?'"

She added: "It was as if the world revolved around him. Everything that happened had an effect on him, good or bad."

Now, however, Trump's sense of victimhood strikes even some allies as particularly incongruous considering the devastation wrought by the pandemic and the pain and anguish apparent in Black Lives Matter protests. ...

[T]hose in Trump's orbit are trying to nudge him toward a sunnier, less egocentric approach to the crises he is facing, fearing that his sullen demeanor could backfire politically. ... [Advisers have] sought to buttress Trump's mood with events they thought he would enjoy, such as celebrating truckers by bringing 18-wheelers onto the White House South Lawn in mid-April or creating social media videos that feature throngs of his adoring fans ... [and giving him] internal polling that shows him in a better position than public surveys, which universally show him trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. ...

[People who have spoken with Trump recently are] describing him as shellshocked and sullen about his declining fortunes even as he continues to insist he will ultimately win in November.

"We had the greatest economy in the world," Trump said in an Oval Office meeting last month ... Trump simply keeps on repeating, "I had this great economy and they made me shut it down."

Another adviser who chatted with Trump about a month ago said the president opened with a lengthy rant expressing animus toward reporters — with Trump citing individual names of journalists and specific stories, particularly those about the coronavirus recovery. This person added that Trump also railed about pollsters being out to get him and deliberately sampling the wrong voters, and complained he was being blamed for protests that he had nothing to do with.

A third outside adviser in frequent touch with the White House said that in a recent conversation, the president seemed almost "inconsolable" and summed up Trump's riff: Gripes about the great economy he built, now felled by the virus, and also how "some stupid cop in Minneapolis kneels on someone's neck and now everyone is protesting."

The president has also complained to political advisers that the media blames him for the protests in the wake of Floyd's death, and that no matter what he says, "it is not enough." ...

[Trump] has seemed tired, low-energy and lacking the passion and energy that defined him when he was a candidate during the 2016 race. ...

He has been spending an inordinate amount of time watching television news and has been scrambling for ways to fire up his base and keep his loyalists supportive, with little in the way of a set daily schedule.

"Every guy that talks to him, the first half of the conversation is, 'Woe is me,'" said one of the outside operatives, speaking anonymously to share private details. "They're all saying ... 'Presidents are supposed to deal with crises.' But he's fixated."

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University and author of the forthcoming book, "Strongmen," a history of authoritarian leaders, said Trump's victimization complex fits a pattern of authoritarian leaders past and present.

"They have no empathy, and they only see the world through how things affect them personally," Ben-Ghiat said. "They're not there to govern. They're there to enrich themselves, they're there to plunder the nation ..." ...

Despite his bouts of moroseness, Trump can also exhibit optimism not entirely grounded in reality. He has continued to tell advisers, for instance, that he is certain the virus will go away by October and that there will be a "cure" by then — a word he favors over "vaccine."

Then, he adds in these tellings, the economy will rebound overnight and he will win a second term.
Jesus. I envision a four-year-old kid getting a new yellow Tonka truck to play with in the sandbox when I read "celebrating truckers by bringing 18-wheelers onto the White House South Lawn".

Trump has always been obsessed with big crowds. But now he is FINALLY starting to realize - nearly one month after Tulsa - that the rampant pandemic might put a dent in how many people will come out to worship him. His advisers are not sure what to do. As Greg Sargent of the WaPo writes, Trump's insatiable megalomania is "bumping up against the consequences of his depravity and incompetence". There is a genuine fear of more tiny crowds, but the campaign thinks it's worth the risk because without regular doses of crowds cheering his every slurred syllable and mispronounced word, Trump gets depressed and #SAD.

Timothy O'Brien, the author of a Trump biography (TrumpNation):
Trump's biggest existential fear is that the spotlight will be turned off, the seats will be empty, and his phone will stop ringing. If the ratings drop, he drops. There isn't any part of his life that hasn't been touched by this. His obsession with newspaper and TV coverage in the '70s, '80s and '90s; how many people show up at his rallies; how he's performing in the polls. It's always there.
Trump cannot measure his self-worth by anything he's done, because he doesn't do anything. His only validation comes from the perception (or the illusion) of popularity. But it's an empty yardstick. No one (not even Trump) can control his popularity. One day, people may simply stop showing up. When that inevitably happens, how will Trump see himself as anything other than worthless?

In the meantime, Trump continues to deny and distort reality, telling Sean Hannity last Thursday.
"We're doing very well in the polls," Trump declared, when in fact his approval numbers are 15 points underwater and he's trailing Biden nationally by 10 points. Both metrics have gotten worse over the last few weeks, but Trump insisted: "We're rapidly rising."

"There's great spirit," Trump continued. "Spirit like nobody's ever seen before, actually. And there's no spirit for Joe."
Trump was asked today about Joe Biden's economic plan. His answer was a complete mess. This was one sentence:
It's a plan that is very radical left, but he said the right things, because he's copying what I've done.
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Also: Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed that he has not briefed Trump in two months on the pandemic.

He says he has not even seen Trump in more than five weeks.
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