ABC and CNN are reporting that Trump’s entire legal team walked yesterday leaving him unrepresented in his impeachment trial in the Senate.  The reason?  It’s probably obvious, but it’s also being reported that Trump is clinging to the “election was rigged” lie to justify inciting insurrection, and the lawyers, led by Lindsey Graham pal Butch Bowers, were having none of it.  Their strategy was to argue the constitutionality of the impeachment charge of a former president, but Trump still thinks he can overturn the world by repeating one gigantic lie after another.  Without social media to repeat the lie, he’s just another criminal awaiting trial.

You know he hates that, and that’s a good thing.

A great opinion piece in the NY Times this week by Bret Stephens drew a direct parallel line between today’s Team Trump and the German army’s defeat in 1918.  The commonality is the term Dolchstosslegende, which literally means “stab in the back myth”, and was used during the remilitarization in Weimar period after WWI.  The myth goes like this – when the German army was being routed all over northern Europe towards the end of the war in 1918, it was actually winning, and corrupt politicians stabbed the military in the back by signing an armistice with the Allies to end the war.  That lie was used thousands of times by Hitler and his henchmen as they seized power from the “schemers” (politicians and Jews), proclaiming they were restoring Germany’s honor and greatness.  Sound familiar?

Dolchestosslegende is precisely what Trump, Rudy, and his merry band of deplorables are using against Americans to steal the election from a duly elected President, Joe Biden.  And the amazing feature of this myth is that it really doesn’t matter if the lies are blatantly false; it proves that if your repeat an outrageous lie enough times, people will believe it.  Trumpland is so inured to receiving lies that they are simply accepted, even though they are pure farce.

And that is the point.

Just like everything else Trump, information about his case of COVID-19 is wholly and completely uninformative, not to mention unsettling. Sean Conley, his physician (not a MD, but an Osteopath), is obviously on a very short leash being controlled completely by Trump and his henchman.  The timeline, true condition, vital signs, and prognosis for Trump are completely opaque.  The information is so inconsistent and poor that the possibilities for his condition range from he’s not sick and faking the whole thing to he’s already dead.

To confuse matters even more, the WH has released photos of Trump “working” and even posted a video of Trump doing a “single take” video talking about how great he’s feeling.  Yes, that’s all bullshit.  The photos, taken in two different rooms showing him supposedly working throughout the day are staged, and taken 10 minutes apart using the same binder, folders, and Trump’s signature fat sharpie he uses for autographs.  The Washington Post has just posted an expert analysis of the video, concluding that it is heavily edited with a tool called Fluid Morph which camouflages edits.  They even found one part of the video where he was starting to cough, but then doesn’t.  Also, you can see the background shifting through the various edits.  This is the technique used in so-called “deep fakes” where videos are altered to show events that didn’t actually happen.  Here’s the video:

It is key that Americans understand clearly the condition of their president, but that is simply not going to happen with Trump.  Falsehoods are genetically encoded in him, and he will lie when telling the truth is easier.  We will likely never know the true extent of Trump’s illness until after he leaves office.

The latest:

The birthers are back, and this time with a vengeance.  Trump repeated the lie that Kamala Harris was not born in the US from the podium in the White House briefing room.

Trump’s goon, Louis DeJoy, continues his dismantling of the Post Office, happy to inconvenience 300 million Americans and all businesses for his boss’s benefit.  After the uproar, today he put out a letter acknowledging “unintended consequences” for his actions.  Translation: “Exactly what Trump wanted.”  DeJoy’s letter is laughable since, just yesterday…

Trump admitted he was withholding funds from the Post Office to make it harder for Americans to vote.  The one feature of Trump’s presidency is that he really doesn’t do anything to hide his criminality and corruption.  He just does it and admits it on national television.  Trumpists believe, “He’s just saying it like it is.”

At the same time, he and Melania applied for vote by mail ballots in Florida.  Yeah. They really did that.

Presidency by Chaos continues as the invertebrates in the Senate started their 6 week Labor Day vacation after doing diddly squat for suffering Americans.  We’re truly living in a post democracy country.

We all know that generally, Trump is in poor health.  He’s obese, and lies about his weight and his height to conceal that.  He wears lifts in his shoes to appear taller which throws off his posture.  At the G7 summit in Italy in 2017, he rode in a golf cart while other world leaders strolled through the town where it was being held.  His diet is terrible, and he was rushed to Walter Reid Hospital last November for an unknown reason, only that it was for pre-work for his annual physical.  That physical is reported to have occurred in April, but results weren’t released until June 3rd, showing weight gain but stating the he “remains in good health”.

There have been a lot of questions about his true health as frailty, unsteadiness, and slurring his words have come to light regularly.  At It happened again on Saturday during the West Point graduation that Trump invited himself to attend, demanding that graduates already released to protect them from COVID-19 were ordered back to provide a backdrop for another of his rambling, self-aggrandizing word salad speeches.  This time, though, he struggled to drink water out of a glass, unable to raise it to his mouth with one hand, struggled to pronounce the word “ceremony” and then, after the speech unsteadily negotiated a shallow ramp down from the stage.  Here’s the walk.

Some make the excuse that he’s 74 years old; some think that he’s unsteady with those lifts in his shoes; I think he has some kind of health issue that he’s concealing from the public.  The slurring of words and weakness on his right side are telling, and feed speculation about Trump’s health on social media.  The lies and bombastic rhetoric pouring out of the White House  and his enablers tend to numb the public to his outrageous behavior; add that to his doctors exaggerating his “good health” and you get what you have today – speculation about his true condition.  Trump even gaslights the American people about his own health.  It’s time for him to come clean before the election, but I’m not holding my breath.

In yet another step toward Trumpist fascism, Trump has announced he’s signing an executive order to curb Twitter’s (and other social media platforms) ability to moderate content posted there.  Trump has regularly violated community standards on Twitter, spouting lies, conspiracy theories, personal attacks, and even accusations of murder.  Twitter, and Facebook for that matter, regularly police their platforms for fake news, bots, trolls, and threats.  Frankly, the job they do is inconsistent and generally piss-poor, allowing shocking content to stay posted.   The cancer within social media is the persistent presence of bots and troll which sow discontent, conflict, and dis-information to billions of users.

Up until this weekend, Twitter has allowed Trump to run rampant with no moderation, spreading bile sometimes hundreds of times a day.  The tipping point was his posting of lies and conspiracy theories this weekend about voting by mail.  Trump knows that the more people who vote, the less his chance of being reelected.  Let’s be clear about his intent.  He’s not concerned about non-existent voter fraud. He’s concerned about Americans voting. Period.  If there were free and fair elections with easy access to a ballot Trump will get walloped by double digits.  He and this toads know that, so he’s waging an all out war against voting by mail, even illegally threatening states by withholding appropriated funds from them (just like he did when he has attempting to extort Ukraine to get at Joe Biden).

My belief is this executive order will be just more Trump double speak to rile up his base and give him and Press Room Barbie more bile they can spread on national television and Twitter.  Trump is an ignorant, boorish, self-centered blowhard and everyone knows it, including actual lawyers.  Those lawyers know that the President of the United States attempting to stifle private parties that displease him is the textbook example of government violation of free speech rights.

Let’s review.  The First Amendment says,

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The highlight is mine.  The First Amendment is designed to prevent the Congress from passing laws that abridge freedom of expression,  but case law over the centuries has established a general foundation that prevents the government from controlling what individuals can say or do.  Twitter and other social media platforms are private and establish terms of service and community standards of conduct.  Trump isn’t forced to use Twitter, he CHOSE it rather than what previous presidents have done by communicating to the People through press briefings and official statements.  He has cynically used Twitter specifically to spout bullshit that the press would (and does) immediately call him on.  He hates that, continuously trying to circumvent any fact checking by spewing his bile directly through the platform.

If Twitter is guilty of anything, it’s allowing this to go on far too long.  Any other individual spreading the kinds of personal attacks, libel, and outright falsehoods would have been banned long ago.  If Twitter would just cut him off, he would be forced to go back to conventional means of communication.  They opened this can of worms to drive more traffic to the platform and have looked the other way for years, so this crisis is as much their fault as Trump’s.

Trump’s executive order won’t really change anything except intimidate Twitter from any further attempts at moderation of his stream of daily manure that he spews.  I predict that, like his other jaw dropping conduct, will work and Twitter will back down, even though they should ban him today.