In a gigantic breach of protocol, Trump stupidly hinted at jobs numbers over an hour before the official release this morning.  Early markets were roiled by the tweet.  Trump violated his primary responsibility to the American people which is to protect them and the economy.  To self aggrandize, he simply couldn’t resist front running a positive jobs report.  Here is a chart of pre-open dollar moves by month.  The one on the right is today’s:

.2% doesn’t sound like much, but it is billions of dollars in value changing hands.  Trump is so narcissistically disabled that he has no understanding of the effect of his words.  Everything is about him, his grievance, his gnawing need to be praised and the victor that he simple blurts out whatever he believes makes him looks good.

The markets listen very closely to every single syllable uttered by the president and his representatives.  His words carry awesome authority.  Our system of government is not only one of laws, but over 230 years of protocol and tradition.  It’s not set up to endure a feckless moron.  His unpredictable behavior is causing enormous damage in 2 ways: he’s normalizing outrageous behavior which desensitizes the market to actual risks, and his erratic tweeting is shifting billions of dollars of actual value within the market that has introduced unsystematic risk.  The markets hate not understanding risks.

This tweet this morning is one of the most outrageous breaches of confidentiality we’ve yet to see.  And that’s saying a a lot.

Yes, it was one of those You Just Can’t Make This Up moments.  Here’s Cheeto Jesus, in all of his self-aggrandized glory, spouting bullshit to Sean Hannity about how NFL football players are “disrespecting the flag and the troops” by not standing for the national anthem.  AND, he’s using an Air National Guard hangar in Pennsylvania packed with super patriot supporters as his super patriot backdrop.  But that’s not the funny part.

Here’s the funny part – At the very moment Trump is railing at Hannity, Retreat begins playing on the base loudspeakers.  Retreat is played at military bases when the flag is being lowered.  Military personnel are supposed to stand at attention, and if outdoors, salute.  Civilians are to stand silently with their hands over their hearts.  What does Trump do?  He keeps laughing and talking, even remarking, “What a nice sound that is, are they playing that for you or for me?”  Then he says, “They’re playing that in honor of his ratings,” gesturing towards Hannity. “He’s beating everybody.”  There’s a video of the disaster here.

As I said, you just can’t make this up.  Here’s the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES at a military base hurling invective at players for “disrespecting the flag” at the VERY MOMENT he’s actually disrespecting the flag while he laughs and jokes.

What an ass.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” — H. L. Mencken

Yes, it’s true, newspaperman H.L. Mencken wrote these words that were published by the Baltimore Evening Sun on 26 July 1920.  The words were written 97 years ago, coming true in 2017.

And in other news from the front lines of Cheeto Jesus’ Embarrass America Again tour, at a meeting with European leaders yesterday, Trump threatened to cut off German car sales in the US.  That’s right folks, no more German cars.  In the meeting, he threatened to cut off sales and impose a 35% import tax.  He also called Germans “very bad”.  What an ass (sorry Momma).

In this latest episode of urinating on allies, Trump forgot a few things:

• The BMW X3, X4, X5, and X6 are built in the Bavarian state of…North Carolina.
• The Volkswagen Passat is built in Southern German state of Tennessee.
• The Mercedes C Class, M Class, and GL Class are built in the German state of Alabamdama.
• Other countries where German cars are made are Mexico, Hungary, Slovakia, and France.

The facts are that a huge number of German cars sold in the US are made in the US.  More importantly, of the top 15 productive auto plants in the US, 7 are foreign owned.  Like other industries, the global auto industry is complex.  Some cars built in the US are actually exported to…Germany.  Some are sold here, and some are exported to other countries.  The issues of trade and trade imbalances do not lend themselves to platitudes and childish name calling.

As in most issues Trump has talked about, he takes a simpleton approach to complex issues.  Slapping a 35% tariff on imports from Germany would have an immediate and catastrophic effect, costing Americans thousands of jobs and driving costs up for everyone.  If Trump spent less time on pissing off allies, and more time getting his own goddam house in order, we’d be the better for it.  Or, would someone please just get him a Coke and bag of Cheetos and put him in front of a television so he can just flip channels all day?

It’s zero days since we were embarrassed by this parasite infesting the WH.

In recent weeks, many who feared Trump as a dangerous ideologue have come to learn he’s actually the opposite – rather than having firmly held beliefs and programs to implement policy on those beliefs, he’s actually just a clown.  He’s a dangerous, life threatening clown, but he is, in the end, simply a clown.  He has no idea what he’s doing, veering from disaster to disaster, always shocked that his latest brash move, childish insult, and idiotic tweet doesn’t result in adulation which he apparently needs on a minute by minute.  This moron actually believed that firing James Comey would 1) be wildly popular, especially among Democrats; 2) end the FBI investigation against him and the rest of his clown car.  Apparently, he really was shocked at the reaction by the press and the general public, and in the process has attracted an even tougher investigator who has prosecutorial authority.

These aren’t the actions of an ideologue, these are the mindless reactions of an idiot.  I don’t know which is scarier; a radical ideologue with totalitarian tendencies, or a simpleton, susceptible to manipulation by actual dangerous people whose poor advice results in the daily dumpster fire unfolding every day on our television sets.

One thing we know is that foreign leaders around the world, but especially in Europe, are shaking their heads and laughing at him (and at us).   Friday, Susan Glasser of Politico wrote of the international reaction to Trump, and it’s not pretty.  A few tidbits:

“People here think Trump is a laughingstock.”

“The president of the United States has a 12-second attention span.”

I could go on and on, but you get the drift.  My thinking on Trump has evolved over the last 120 days of the worst president in US history.  Before, I was furious that Americans could be this stupid to elect a reality television star who played a successful businessman on television.  I feared he could burn down the world trying to play his new reality role as president.  I still fear that, but am now just embarrassed; I’m humiliated that the US could go from the most globally popular president in modern history to this clown.  However, I’m liking the new bumper sticker that’s shown up recently on the inter webs –

Elect a Clown, Expect a Circus.