Jane McAlevey writes in Alternet that there is method to Trump’s seeming madness. Whenever things get rough, he changes the subject.

This past week, as the media was roasting Jeff Sessions for lying to Congress under oath, Trump changed the subject by tweeting that Obama was wiretapping his phones at Trump Tower. The Sessions matter was dropped, and all the weekend talk shows were obsessed with Trump’s tweet about Obama.

Every tweet Trump bangs out has three primary purposes: 1) to lure most media and pundit discussion away from critical news Americans desperately need; 2) to embolden his base; and 3) to make ordinary people throw their hands up and say, “Just turn it off, I can’t watch it anymore,” or a key variant, “Just turn it off, who even knows who is telling the truth? They are all liars.”

The attorney general also acts as the defender of the administration, and as such, will play a crucial role in protecting and defending Trump and the crooks and thieves being positioned into key agencies so they can, per Steve Bannon’s words at the Conservative Political Action Conference, “deconstruct the administrative state.” Trump and Bannon truly need Sessions, a racist, homophobic misogynist, in the position at the helm of law enforcement, as attorney general. He covers all their asses.

Crazy. Like a fox.

Every day brings new surprises and new tweets from the president. Most recently, he tweeted that President Obama was tapping his phone lines during the campaign without offering any evidence. Then he tweeted that Arnold Schwarzenegger was a very poor host of “Celebrity Apprentice.” No end to the surprising ideas that rattle his mind in the wee hours. He has insisted that no one in his campaign had any communications with Russian officials, but several have reluctantly admitted this was not true. He fired his National Security Advisor Mike Flynn for lying about his contact with the Russian ambassador, but several other Trump associates have also met with the Russian ambassador, including his son-in-law. It is all very puzzling.

Psychiatrists disagree about how to judge Trump’s mental health. Since 1964, when a number of psychiatrists made negative pronouncements about Republican candidate Senator Barry Goldwater, most follow the “Goldwater rule.” That rule says you cannot diagnose someone you have not personally examined.

However, a substantial number of psychiatrists today believe that the Goldwater rule has been superseded by a “duty to warn.”

Here are examples of both views.

Psychiatrists have appeared on the Lawrence O’Donnell program in MSNBC to defend the “duty to warn.” They believe Trump is unfit to serve as president. They say they have collected 26,000 signatures on their petition.

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/mental-health-experts-say-trump-is-unfit-to-serve-882688067737

By contrast, I offer this comment sent to me by a psychiatrist who asked to remain anonymous:

In psychiatry, diagnosis opens the possible pathway to treatment informing those us entrusted with the care of another an appropriate and effective approach. There are many different approaches to persons with the same or similar “diagnostic labels.” Psychiatrists have to deal with the complexity of the person, as do other medical fields, but it needs to be more taken into account due to denial, resistance and non-compliance given the relative subjectivity of the field, though this comes with the territory and is not necessarily a hindrance. In most medical fields diagnosis is followed by treatment. Donald Trump, as an obvious understatement, is not a candidate for treatment. Thus the nomenclature of malignant narcissism with insecure, infantile, sociopathic, possibly psychopathic, and grandiose features, along with total lack of personal insight will not be helpful in removing him from office. It would only lead to psychological or psychiatric nomenclature which would be a dead-end in salvaging our democracy. Only a description of his expressions, behavior and actions would possibly be effective. That he has shown massive displays of congenital lying, misogyny, racism, indiscriminately abusive behavior, lack of a conscience, insulting, brazen inaccurate claims, inability to read, nullifying the media that is his source of news, shocking ignorance of his responsibilities, demeaning behavior, ruthlessness, inappropriateness at all levels,; not permitting a follow-up question let alone a completed one but primordially sniffing out whether the questioner idolizes him or is the enemy; incoherent rambling, chaos at the highest level, no incidence of self accountability plus possible financial, national and international improprieties. Not having any respect for other people, the law, our history and the constitution would be a more effective focus for removing this misguided individual before we all enter the history books in collective tragedy.

What do you think?

Stephen Collinson writes for CNN that the Trump administration’s relationship with Russia is obsessing Washington, and he explains why.

https://apple.news/AypfALO5IS7C2etl03nCqPQ

The administration has given contradictory stories. At one point, Trump said that no one talked to Russian officials, but that wasn’t true.

The administration can’t keep its stories straight. Trump said Jeff Sessions would not recuse himself, and a few hours later, Sessions recused himself.

No one understands Trump’s fawning comments about Putin or the alignment of his foreign policy views with those of Russia.

Many investigations are underway.

Democrats hope the administration gets tied up in knots to slow down its retrogressive agenda.

Tom Engelhardt writes in the Nation that Trump’s rise to power was facilitated by the reign of the billionaire class, a tiny class to be sure, but very powerful. He assumes that Trump is a billionaire. If we ever see his taxes, we may learn that his greatest hoax was persuading people he was a billionaire. He once called himself “the king of debt.” He may owe billions. His new job may help him pay down those debts. Strangest thought of all: The Trump Presidential Library. This for a man who proudly doesn’t read books. Maybe his best talk shows ever? The full run of “The Apprentice”? Executive orders? Photographs of detention centers for the millions of immigrants he deported?

In this spooky article, he begins like this:

It’s been epic! A cast of thousands! (Hundreds? Tens?) A spectacular production that, five weeks after opening on every screen of any sort in America (and possibly the world), shows no sign of ending. What a hit it’s been! It’s driving people back to newspapers (online, if not in print) and ensuring that our everyday companions, the 24/7 cable news shows, never lack for “breaking news” or audiences. It’s a smash in both the Hollywood and car accident sense of the term, a phenomenon the likes of which we’ve simply never experienced. Think of Nero fiddling while Rome burned and the cameras rolled. It’s proved, in every way, to be a giant leak. A faucet. A spigot. An absolute flood of non-news, quarter-news, half-news, crazed news, fake news, and over-the-top actual news.

Among so many subjects I haven’t even mentioned, including Melania and former wife Ivana—is it even possible that she could become the US ambassador to the Czech Republic?—there are, of course, the Trump kids and their businesses and the instantly broken promises on (such an old-fashioned phrase) their conflicts of interest and the conflicts about those conflicts and the presidential tweets, threats, and bluster that have gone with them, not to speak of the issue of for-pay access to the new president. And how about Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner (another walking conflict of you-know-what), who reputedly had a role in the appointment of the new ambassador to Israel, a New York bankruptcy lawyer known for raising millions of dollars to fund a West Bank Jewish settlement and for calling supporters of the liberal Jewish group J Street “far worse than kapos” (Jews who aided the Nazis in their concentration camps). Kushner has now been ordained America’s ultimate peacemaker in the Middle East. And don’t forget that sons Donald and Eric are already saving memorabilia for the future Trump presidential library, a concept that should take your breath away. (Just imagine a library with those giant golden letters over its entrance to honor a man who proudly doesn’t read books and, as with presidential executive orders and possibly even volumes he’s “written,” signs off on things he’s barely bothered to check out.)

David Cole writes in the New York Review of Books that Trump is “almost certainly” violating the United States Constitution every day that he refuses to divest from his international business empire.

He writes (this is an excerpt):

President Trump almost certainly began violating the Constitution the moment he took the oath of office. It’s true that conflict-of-interest statutes don’t cover the president—not because we don’t care about compromised presidents, but because such statutes generally require officeholders to recuse themselves from decisions in which they have a personal financial stake, and in the president’s case, recusal is rarely a workable option, since there is no alternative decision-maker.

What does this mean for Donald Trump? The extent of his business, the Trump Organization, is murky, since it is privately held and Trump has been extremely reluctant to divulge details. But public records establish that his organization is involved in deals and contracts around the globe. Many of those ventures stand to gain from the actions of foreign governments or their agents—including investments involving foreign state-owned companies, government contracts or permits, lease agreements, or even overnight stays or events held at Trump hotels, golf courses, or other properties.

Trump doesn’t care. Apparently, the Republican majority in the Congress doesn’t care either. Once the party of the Constitution, once the party that praised the “original intent” of the Constitution, the party doesn’t care what Trump does, as long as he keeps them in power.

That is why we have to hold them accountable in 2018 and 2020 for this man’s behavior and his infidelity to our laws and Constitution.