It isn't that they've lost the plot; it's that the plot was never what they claimed it to be. For the new Republican Party, what Dear Leader does is now good, whether it is adultery or racism or campaign finance crimes or money-laundering or cooperation with a hostile foreign power or use of the office for personal enrichment or take-your-pick. And in truth it was that way all along. "Principles" were the things they printed up mailers about in order to gain power. But power was the end goal, and is the thing that now must be protected at, literally, all costs.
Anyway, the ranting couch potato has been in fine form all weekend, flitting from one tantrum to the next according to whatever remaining neurons the brain-moths flew into and got themselves tangled in.
That was the start of a three-tweet rant defending Pirro and fellow Fox white nationalism peddler Tucker Carlson, both in hot water for being fat-mouthed racists to an extent that not even Fox can tolerate, not with advertisers watching. Followed by insults of the weekend anchoring team.
Yes, that's right. The President of the United States, the so-called leader of the free world, is spending his weekend demanding that tv networks bring back his favorite shows. Publicly. By thumping his thumbs around on a tiny smartphone screen.
This is the world in 2019. And then, suddenly, he hurdles off in another direction.
Is he on drugs? Is he on not enough drugs? Is there someone we should be calling? Are his doctors with him? Did Ivanka leave him alone with the cough syrup again?
We've also got impotent call-outs of private corporations, a confusing conspiracy theory about Google and Hillary Clinton, bizarre claims that the United States has gone to the top of all lists on the Environment", multiple self-retweets of Trump's own attacks on the federal investigation into Russian election hacking, and a raging shit-fit over Saturday Night Live capped by musings over whether his government should take action against the comedy program.
I want to dedicate that absolutely unhinged tweet to Vice President Mike Pence. That one's for you, Mike Pence, the person most in a position to recognize and act on a sitting president's obvious instability and unfitness for office but who instead has devoted himself to protecting Trump through every corrupt, racist, nonsensical, conspiracy-filled, paranoid, buffoonish act. Trump is not the reason the Republican Party has descended into madness, Mr. Pence. You are. It's over-ambitious, under-principled dullards like you that skipped past every ethical boundary you encountered for the sake of a grand partisan plan to give America what you think it deserves, good and hard.
Well that's transparently bullshit and everybody knows it, but at least we know the man is still devoted to lying his ass off in the usual, more banal ways.
So here's the thing, and the reason that this three-day ongoing tantrum is not just something to be ogled over, but a hint something deeper is going on: Donald Trump may be unpredictable in action, but is predictable as an egg timer in his emotions. Donald Trump is currently uncontrollably pissed off, and when Donald Trump has been uncontrollably pissed off, in the past two years, it has frequently been because Donald Trump had gotten word something Very Bad was in the works.
It might be a new, major revelation in the papers. It might be a new indictment, or a new twist on an old indictment. (See: Ex-campaign head Paul Manafort now facing charges that, unlike the ones he has been convicted of so far, are unpardonable even by a president.) His "lawyer" Rudy Giuliani might have popped in to advise him that prosecutors now know a new thing that Donald Trump absolutely did not want them to know. Yet another staffer might be heading for the hills. Some idiot forgot to order enough ice cream, cocaine, or both. Melania's body double is suing for back wages. Sean Hannity broke up with him. North Korea is threatening to send him a letter in which all the i's are not dotted with little hearts.
But a Trump Tantrum on this scale is reasonable circumstantial evidence that an extremely bad something is about to happen that Donald Trump is already fuming about. What will it be? We don't know, but the man is the living embodiment of ego—the only bad things that do happen, in the Trump universe, are things that make Donald Trump look bad.
