President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

But he is racist enough to make the Duke's 400 list.

 

That's not counting the couple of trillion dollars he has stashed away in his Uncle Scrooge money bins.

 

From Fiona Hill's upcoming book:

Trump spent most national security meetings calling his predecessors 'idiots' and claiming credit for things he didn't do, book says

 

Dementia + assholery is a helluva drug.

 

I hope whoever has the last book — Haberman? — does a fair job of summarizing all the others.

I actually listened to Peril, the Woodward book. Maybe the first time I've really gotten through one of those. I'm glad I did. It was good to be reminded what Trump was.

A very few things that stood out:
— He honest to god, to this day, believes the election was stolen. This is interesting because I assumed he was just playing along to raise money and maintain his presence. There seem to be about two factors. First, his advisor told him if he got 65 million votes, he'd win. He got 75 million, so he can not compute how he could have lost. Second, he seems to realize Rudy/Powell/Lindell, etc. are crazy, but he believes just enough for it to confirm his suspicion.

Everyone in his orbit who isn't completely insane begs him to stop talking about the election, but he won't because he truly feels victimized, and probably importantly, he knows it fires up his base. It was pretty clear keeping his base on his side was a motivating factor for a lot of the nastiest stuff through his term.

— Many of the Republicans who fawn all over him actually like him. I assumed Lindsey Graham, for instance, was just playing along, too. He's on record trashing Trump, obviously. I assumed Graham was just looking out for his own seat. But nope. He really likes and respects Trump, even if he does acknowledge Trump's darker side. Unfortunately for the rest of us, his "darker side" involves a coup.

 

They sure would have. No doubt.

 

I'm not so sure it's "liking" Trump in the normal human sense of the term so much as it is an inherent need to follow an authoritarian leader whoever it is. It's the submissive side of the authoritarian personality, the kind of person who lives to follow orders. I mean, Graham is a classic submissive type and was long before Trump came along.

 

I think Graham considers himself genuine friends with Trump. If you'd asked me a month ago what I thought the relationship was, I'd have said one of desperation for Graham, who wasn't the most across-the-board nutcase in the GOP and who seemed to have good real-world relationships with senators across the aisle, with Biden, obviously with McCain. I thought Graham realized a month or two into Trump's term that he needed to get in line with the base or he was going to lose his senate seat.

And maybe that's what it was in, say, March 2017. But today, it certainly seems like there's a strong personal relationship. Maybe it's submissive, but I no longer think it's fake. I think if you and I were talking to Graham alone in a room, he'd tell us he liked Trump a lot. That's not what I would have guessed.

 

Yeah, that’s what we’ve all heard.

 

Genuine friends with Trump like Genuine friends with Biden?