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Pyramid Scheme

 

Trump Dementia Watch (cont.)

Convicted felon Donald Trump gave a rambling press conference last week, stepping in for propaganda princess Karoline Leavitt.  At one point in his incoherent rant, Trump launched into a reverie about reviving archaic "mental institutions" with "bars on the windows."  I'm not kidding.

“I grew up in Queens, we had a place called Creedmoor [Psychiatric Center],” Trump said, “Creedmoor. Did anybody know that? Creedmoor. It was a big … I said, ‘Mom, why are those bars on the building?’ I used to play little league baseball there at a place called Cunningham Park. I was quite the baseball player, you wouldn't believe. But I said to my mother, ‘Mom,’ she would be there, always there for me. She said, ‘Son, you could be a professional baseball player.’ I said, ‘Thanks, mom.’ I said, ‘Why are those bars on the windows?’”

He went on to blame Democrats for the deinstitutionalization of the 1970s and 1980s, saying it caused many people to become homeless.  The fact is the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, signed by former President Jimmy Carter, was designed to serve as a critical safety net for people who couldn’t obtain mental health services. The legislation was promptly defunded and effectively dismantled by former President Ronald Reagan. 

But after blaming Democrats for the end of an older, more barbaric era in mental health care, Trump circled back to his childhood memories.

“It wasn't normal, you know?” he said. “You're used to looking at, like, a window. But this one you're looking at all the steel—vicious steel, tiny windows, bars all over the place. Nobody was getting out. It's called the mental institution. That was an insane asylum.”  Huh?

 

Who's the Real Domestic Terrorist?

Trump Dementia Watch

Convicted felon Donald Trump's largely incoherent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is unlikely to quell the growing questions about his mental fitness after he continually flubbed the name of the arctic territory he wants to conquer.

Trump kept confusing Greenland with Iceland, a nearby country.  Trump blamed Tuesday’s stock market slide on “Iceland,” saying, "They're not there for us on Iceland, that I can tell you. I mean, our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland has already cost us a lot of money."

Trump was lying (once again)-- the fact is that the stock market dipped because investors were rightly concerned about Trump's rage-fueled tariff threat against our NATO allies (for standing with Denmark  against Trump's threats to take the country by force.)  Then Trump flubbed the name of Greenland once again: "Until the last few days, when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me daddy."  

The fact that Trump is confusing the name of the territory he has been bizarrely consumed with conquering gives fuel to Democrats’ argument that Trump's Cabinet officials need to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. The 25th Amendment allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to determine that the president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office" and thus remove him from the role.

"The president of the United States is extremely mentally ill and it’s putting all of our lives at risk," Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona wrote in a post on X after Trump embarrassingly told the Norwegian prime minister that his demands to conquer Greenland were the result of him not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. "The 25th Amendment exists for a reason—we need to invoke it immediately."

"Donald Trump is unfit to lead and clearly out of control. Invoke the 25th Amendment," Democratic Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California wrote in a post on X.

Trump, for his part, has been defiant that there are no problems with his health or cognitive abilities, even though we all see with our own eyes that he can't stay awake at events, has bruising on his hands, and speaks like an incoherent fool.

The fact that he keeps confusing the territory he wants to take over will do nothing to assuage those concerns.  "Donald Trump is overseas embarrassing America on the world stage. Again," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a post on X.

 

Trumps Marks His First Year Back in Office with Cruelty and Lies

Convicted felon Donald Trump marked the one-year anniversary of his return to the presidency with a rambling and nearly incoherent press conference. However, instead of addressing the issues on which his administration is failing, Trump ranted about a host of other topics.

A considerable amount of Trump’s time was dedicated to justifying the killing of Minnesota mother Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.  “They’re going to make mistakes sometimes. ICE is going to be too rough with somebody—you know, they deal with rough people. Are they going to make a mistake? Sometimes it can happen,” Trump said.

Trump inaccurately claimed that Good’s father was “a tremendous Trump fan” and that “I hope he still feels that way.” This appears to actually be a reference to Good’s former father-in-law, whom conservative outlets like Fox News have touted because he said he doesn’t blame ICE for the killing.

Trump also criticized a woman, apparently Good’s wife, Becca Good, who witnessed the killing.  “When [Good] was shot, there was another woman that was screaming ‘shame, shame, shame, shame,’ right? We saw it. So loud. Like a professional opera singer, she was so loud and so professional,” Trump said.  The right has repeatedly pushed the made-up conspiracy theory that people protesting against ICE actions in Minnesota are paid political agitators.

In another section of his bizaare speech, Trump held up mugshots of purported criminals who were also allegedly undocumented immigrants, using the photos to justify the brutality of ICE’s actions across the country.  As has often been the case during his time in the public eye, Trump made racist remarks. This time, it was his decision to call the majority-Black nation of Somalia “a backward country” where “they just have people running around, killing each other, and trying to pirate ships.”  Trump and other Republicans have recently attacked the Somali immigrant community in Minnesota for attacks and racist smears, most notably singling out Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar.

In response to criticism of his deployment of armed federal troops to American cities with large minority populations, Trump said, “To me, a town, it looks better when you have military people. These are big, strong guys. The bad guys look at them and say, 'We're not gonna mess with them.'”  He argued that crime has fallen in the cities where federal forces were deployed, which is generally false.  In addition, crime rates were already going down under former President Joe Biden.  In a weird reference, Trump said, “Your lover’s not going to be killed anymore, so he can act like a real lover,”  “You can walk right through the middle of the town. And D.C. is beautiful again too.”  For the record, DC has always been beautiful-- especially before military personnel began prowling tourist areas of the city (instead of where actual crime occurs).

Trump also returned to a favorite topic of his—long-debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. He claimed the race was “rigged” and that “numbers are coming out that show it even more plainly.”  None of this is true. Trump lost to Biden because more people voted for Biden.

The cringeworthy event reinforced why, after a year back in the presidency, Trump faces numerous crises of his own making. Costs are generally up, people live in fear of being harassed and killed by their own government, and the United States has become an international pariah.  Even Trump’s longtime allies at Fox News have begun to admit his unpopularity is a drag on the party. But Trump’s press event makes it clear he has no intention of shutting up any time soon.

 

Not Even U.S. Citizens Are Safe from ICE!

This week, ICE agents broke into a family home without a warrant, and kidnapped an elderly U.S. citizen without allowing him to produce ID.  Chongly "Scott" Thao spoke of his terror after the agents broke through the door of his home while they were singing karaoke and hauled him out semi-naked into the snow at gunpoint in front of his grandchildren.

ChongLy “Scott” Thao said that his daughter-in-law woke him up from a nap and said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were banging at the door of his residence in St. Paul. Masked agents then forced their way in and pointed guns at the family, yelling at them, Thao recalled. “I was shaking,” he said. “They didn’t show any warrant; they just broke down the door.” Thao, who has been a U.S. citizen for decades, said that as he was being detained he asked his daughter-in-law to find his identification but the agents told him they didn’t want to see it.

The agents then dragged the 56-year-old U.S. citizen, who was wearing only boxer shorts and crocs, into the snowy street as temperatures hovered around 14 degrees, as he pleaded with them that he was an American.  Thao, an American born in Laos, came to the U.S. with his parents at the age of 4 and became a U.S. citizen in 1991. During the ICE raid, Thao told Reuters he used a blanket from his 4-year-old grandson's bed to cover his bare torso.  “I was praying. I was like, God, please help me, I didn’t do anything wrong. Why do they do this to me? Without my clothes on,” Thao later told a local news outlet as his friends tried to repair the broken door. 

Thao said agents drove him “to the middle of nowhere” and made him get out of the car in the frigid weather so they could photograph him. He said he feared they would beat him.  Only then was Thao asked for his ID, which agents earlier prevented him from retrieving.  Agents eventually realized that he was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, Thao said, and an hour or two later, they brought him back to his house. There they made him show his ID and then left without apologizing for detaining him or breaking his door, Thao said.  He described feeling “fear, shame, and desperation” over the incident. A statement from his family called the treatment “unnecessary, degrading, and deeply traumatizing.”

Thao’s experience has shattered the idea that citizenship would shield his family from such scenes. “We came here for a purpose, right? To have a bright future. To have a safe place to live… If this is going to turn out to be America, what are we doing here? Why are we here?” he added.

The Department of Homeland Security insisted agents were at the property looking for two convicted sex offenders with deportation orders, and said a U.S. citizen at the address who “refused to be fingerprinted or facially identified” was detained because he matched their description.  Thao’s family said in a statement that it “categorically disputes” the DHS account and “strongly objects to DHS’s attempt to publicly justify this conduct with false and misleading claims.”

Thao told reporters that only he, his son and daughter-in-law and his grandson live at the rental home. Neither they nor the property’s owner are listed in the Minnesota sex offender registry. The nearest sex offender listed as living in the zip code is more than two blocks away. 

ChongLy Thao says he’s planning to file a civil rights lawsuit against DHS and no longer feels secure to sleep in his home.  “I don’t feel safe at all,” Thao said. “What did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything.”