Idiot wind

Blowin' every time you move your teeth.

Two stories from Daily Kos, one about the upcoming world tour, the other on Republican attempts to defend Cheeto Benito in the Comey affair.

It turns out that our Resident has too short an attention span, and is too ignorant, to participate in a standard NATO meeting, so heads of state are being encouraged to limit their speeches to 2 to 4 minutes. Also, it seems he doesn't understand the Israel-Palestine conflict, even though he's about to visit both countries.

Meanwhile, the new talking point about the White House scandals is that he is too stupid to know what he's doing, so you can't blame him.

This has long been obvious. He evidently really thought that he could replace the Affordable Care Act with some policy that would cover everybody, be cheaper than the status quo for consumers, and come with a big tax cut. Then he discovered, much to his surprise, that health care is complicated. (Actually, it isn't all that complicated. It costs money so if you want everybody to have it, wealthier and healthier people have to subsidize poorer and sicker people. That's called arithmetic.)

Here's Tony Schwartz, official biographer, who has spent many a long hour with the man:

Trump was equally clear with me that he didn’t value — nor even necessarily recognize — the qualities that tend to emerge as people grow more secure, such as empathy, generosity, reflectiveness, the capacity to delay gratification or, above all, a conscience, an inner sense of right and wrong. Trump simply didn’t traffic in emotions or interest in others. The life he lived was all transactional, all the time. Having never expanded his emotional, intellectual or moral universe, he has his story down, and he’s sticking to it.
A key part of that story is that facts are whatever Trump deems them to be on any given day. When he is challenged, he instinctively doubles down — even when what he has just said is demonstrably false. I saw that countless times, whether it was as trivial as exaggerating the number of floors at Trump Tower or as consequential as telling me that his casinos were performing well when they were actually going bankrupt. In the same way, Trump sees no contradiction at all in changing his story about why he fired Comey and then undermining the explanatory statements of his aides, or in any other lie he tells. His aim is never accuracy; it’s domination.

That doesn't work when you are president of the United States. I think there is a limit to how long the congressional Republicans can play this game; one way or another he'll be gone before the midterm election. We just have to hope that World War III doesn't come first.