Reports of Trump flying into a rage behind closed doors–shouting at aides, turning on former allies and at one point threatening to sue his campaign manager for failing to deliver good polling numbers–have been ubiquitous over the last three years. But this past week feels qualitatively and quantitatively different, as has fired a series of inspector generals, lashed out at the reliably sycophantic Sen. Lindsey Graham, pushed a number of snake-oil cures for Covid-19 and threatened to cut off federal funding to several states for the “crime” of sending voters applications for absentee ballots, which he insists against all evidence are rife with fraud. He’s lurched between falsely bragging about the number of people we’re testing for Covid-19 and saying that we’re testing too many; between claiming that we’ll have a vaccine by November and insisting that the pandemic will just disappear without a vaccine.
Never a stable genius at the best of times, he’s really melting down before our eyes.
Part of the story is that when the Mueller report didn’t sink his presidency and Senate Republicans acquitted him for a brazenly corrupt and well-documented abuse of power, it gave him a sense of impunity. Impunity always breeds more lawlessness. Continue reading.