As Ted Liu put it today, this is the best opening paragraph ever for a lawsuit:

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.