AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE

[…] everyone around Trump thinks he’s a charlatan, a fool, an idiot and someone ultimately not capable of functioning in this job, [Michael Wolfe]

Trump is not an anomaly. He is, in these times, as American as Apple Pie. [from Cornell West in the Guardian]

He is a sign of our spiritual and ethical bankruptcy – all spectacle; no substance, all narcissism ; no empathy, all appetite & greed but no wisdom and maturity. His triumph comes from GOP implosion — & our obsession w/ big money, big military and big scapegoating of vulnerable people - of color, LGBTQ, immigrants, Muslims, or women. [id]

“I don’t know if the president is clinically off his rocker. I do know, from what I saw and what I heard from people around him, that Donald Trump is deeply unpredictable, irrational, at times bordering on incoherent, self-obsessed in a disconcerting way, and displays all those kinds of traits that anyone would reasonably say, ‘What’s going on here, is something wrong?’” [Michael Wolfe on FIRE & FURY]

[…] this guy is a complete fool. All he managed to do was call more attention to my book. He just shoots himself in the foot at every opportunity.” “I got to a truth that no one else had gotten to- everyone around Trump thinks he’s a charlatan, a fool, an idiot and someone ultimately not capable of functioning in this job. Pretty much nobody has said that although the Washington reporters are talking to the same people I spoke to and getting the same stories.” [id]

Obama also, more pointedly, BOTH Obama and Trump – supported military buildups, wars against Muslim-majority countries, drone strikes, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people, illegal imprisonments of innocent people, inhumane detention camps. These ethics blunders & war crimes have come back, and are devouring America’s democratic soul. [Cornell West]