Burt Reynolds died yesterday. He starred in Deliverance and many other films.
Deliverance is a 1972 thriller starring Reynolds and Jon Voight. Reynolds, a man much better looking than Donald Trump ever was, made a lot of movies.
Yesterday, on PBS’ News Hour, John Yang interviewed Trump’s Director of Strategic Communications, Mercedes Viana Schlapp.
Schlapp is married to Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union — that’s the group that every year puts on the Conservative Politican Action Conference (CPAC) not in, but near, the District of Columbia. CPAC is where those who want to cheer on such unlovely pols as Sen. Ted Cruz (TP-Texas), Sen. Mike Lee (TP-Utah) or Sen. Rand Paul (TP-Kentucky), make a lot of noise, none of it in favor of progressive causes.
Matt and Mercedes Schlapp founded Cove Strategies, a lobbying firm, in 2009. Since Trump swaggered his way into the White House, Cove Strategies’ income has substantially increased. Its first client was Koch Industries.
Mercedes Schlapp was a board member of the National Rifle Association before going to work for Trump.
In his interview of Mercedes Schlapp, Yang implicitly asked Ms. Schlapp how she expects Trump to be delivered from the Swamp that he has created.
Anybody who has ever observed how Trump has behaved both before and after January 20, 2017 can readily see that he has classic narcissistic personality disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and, especially recently, paranoia.
Trump’s paranoia noticeably increased after the New York Times published an op-ed by an anonymous high-level official in the White House, describing in detail how mentally unstable Trump is.
Yesterday, the Senate GOP leadership said that the publication by The New York Times of won’t rein Trump in. Rather, it will increase his paranoia (https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/06/republicans-trump-oped-backfire-809427).
In a segment aired immediately after the Yang-Schlapp interview, President Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta, said that when a Commander-in-Chief distrusts his high-level staffers, who go around him, behind his back, it becomes very dangerous for the nation.
And that’s why Sen. Elizabeth Warren is openly talking about invoking the 25th Amendment to boot Trump.
Neither Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) nor Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) is running for re-electioin.
Yesterday, this is what Sen. Corker, the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said: “Any of us who have dealt with the White House understand the situation that’s there.” Sen. Corker was referring to the anonymous op-ed and the facts revealed in Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear: Trump in the White House.
In his rally yesterday in Montana, Trump expressly told his few remaining supporters that if he’s impeached, it’s their fault (https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/06/politics/trump-impeach-your-fault/index.html).
In the third day of his SCOTUS confirmaiton hearing, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who is a whole lot smarter than Trump, went to great lengths to tell the audience and the folks back home that in many instances, he’ll keep an open mind when he’s confirmed.
But as former Solicitor General Neal Katyal said yesterday’s on PBS’ News Hour, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have asked for some 100,000 pages of documents relating to Kavanaugh’s partisan work for Bush Two. Those documents still have not been produced, and as Katyal said, that’s really fishy.
Kavanaugh will be confirmed before the Supreme Court reconvenes in early October.
And that’s when Trump is counting on Kavanaugh to deliver him from certain impeachment.