Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
This week, some rumination on Trump’s tete a tete with Putin (along with a history lesson for Rob Long), we introduce you to Elizabeth Heng, who is running for Congress in California’s 16th District, we get some #MeToo education from our good pal Mona Charen, (stop whatever you’re doing and buy her book Sex Matters right now) and the city of Santa Barbara declares that if you use a straw in that fair city, you’ll do time. Which sucks. Also, the Word of The Day is spizzerinctum.
Music from this week’s podcast: Sex Bomb by Tom Jones
Subscribe to The Ricochet Podcast in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
I hate to criticize what was mostly a really good podcast.
Stop reading Trump’s mind, guys. You’re no good at it. Nobody can read minds, so I’m certain pundits can’t do it. When Long says that he is certain that when other Presidents said objectionable things at press conferences they did so out of concern for the country while Trump did it for his own ego, that’s mind reading. Mind reading done apparently just to put the most uncharitable spin possible on what the President says is not cool.
Yes, the President gets defensive. He puts his foot in his mouth. I don’t think this is new in presidents.
Pundits should eschew the amateur psychiatrist shtick. It is beneath writers at National Review to, Soviet style, slap people they don’t like with a psychiatric diagnosis. Just saying that the President is a self important jerk says as much as saying he has a narcissistic personality disorder. The psychiatric term is not validated. It has no predictive power. It supposedly includes “high functioning” subtypes, which casts doubt on the rationale for calling it a disorder. It doesn’t even fit Trump that well since he has characteristics that differ from the usual description of its core features. Moreover, anyone who is psychologically “unstable” could not possibly have achieved the pinnacle of success in multiple domains — business, entertainment, and politics — as the President has in his life.
In his lack of ability to speak according to the norms of the ruling class in Washington, DC, or in failing to see the importance of doing so, the President makes a grave error in class based aesthetics, shocking all the usual suspects. Alas, Trump is probably too advanced in years to be trained to mince his words properly.
So 27 people who have never examined the President have diagnosed him? Tell me you wouldn’t love to get hold of an “expert” like that on the witness stand. How many of the “authors” of the book you reference examined the President? I’ll wager exactly zero. And you know as well as I do the Tarasoff doctrine isn’t a medical diagnosis or procedure. It is a legal doctrine to provide a defense to an examining medical professional for reporting a patient’s credible threats to harm someone else, when the reporting would otherwise be a violation of doctor-patient privilege. These charlatans trying to fashion it as some sort of noble gesture by people who have come to their conclusions in violation of medical ethics is sad. The doctrine is meaningless in this situation and they are using it as a fig-leaf to hide their shame.
EDIT- To correctly spell Tarasoff.
Trump’s kids don’t seem very damaged if he actually has NPD, but I’m not an expert.
It’s funny that you included Barry Goldwater in your list, since as I understand it it was his Presidential campaign that led to the ethical prohibition on diagnosing public figures without examination, after a group of psychiatrists said that he was mentally unfit to be President.
Edit: “In your gut you know he’s a nut”.
I met Barry and shook his hand. He had a strong sense of self, and didn’t need external stroking for an ego that will not quit. A good man. A very good man.
That’s wonderful for you.
Has nothing to do with my point, and I can find plenty of people who will tell you that Trump is charming and person able in real life.
Barry Goldwater strikes me as considerably less crooked or whatever than the average politician is today. Just a feeling.
Agreed. And Trump strikes me as the most chooked Republican I know of who was ever a Nominee. (Perhaps, “James Blaine, the congenital liar from the State of Maine” was as bad, but I don’t know. He was one of the few Republicans to lose to a Democrat in the late 1800’s.)
Barry would give you a piece of his mind face to face. Trump is a coward at heart. I recall it being said that Trump has never fired anyone in person, except on TV.
How is Trump crooked?
Oh geez…
What’s the over/under on how many time Gary uses the word Kompromat?
1189 Psychiatrists said Barry Goldwater was unfit to be President, according to Fact Magazine. Using your idea that we should listen to these professionals, how can you defend him? That is 1162 more than the 27 who authored the book you cited (some of whom were actually political pundits, I learned in a Kirkus review, not Mental Health professionals).
Trump isn’t any more crooked than any other POTUS has been on things that will actually affect his actions as POTUS.
Hold on. You’re saying meeting someone face to face, talking to them, maybe even examining them will make your opinion on the person have more weight than someone who has never had significant personal contact, or maybe even examined them? Like say a doctor who has examined someone and found no mental health problems, versus 27 people who are making guesses from afar? Or maybe greater weight than even 1189 people who are making guesses from afar? Huh. Sort of undermines the experts’ book you cited, doesn’t it?
“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.”
Ooh, that’s gonna leave a mark.
Actually, the phrase is “In your guts, you know he’s nuts.”
For starters: Intentionally lying about Birtherism, even after getting Obama’s long form birth certificate. Trump University where Trump scammed hundreds of people out of tens of thousands of dollars. Not paying the contractors and vendors on his buildings and properties. His five bankruptcies. Claiming that he misunderstood questions about White Supremacists and David Duke before the Southern primaries. Claiming that Ted Cruz’s father help Oswald kill Kennedy.
You don’t think Putin has something on Trump? Did you watch the Helsinki Press Conference?
I bought the book. I recall one attorney and one social worker, and the 25 rest being psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors.
Have we ever had a president where there is more circumstantial evidence of the president being blackmailed?
There were rumors that FDR “knew” that Pearl Harbor was coming, and ranting of Truthers that W. knew about 9/11, but those have very little to support those conspiracy theories. Trump’s behavior at the Helsinki Press Conference goes well beyond that.
Read the book and come to your own conclusions. I did.
I did. It can be explained very simply by his personality and needs no Kompromat. Do you think Kim had something on him, too?
W. Has acknowledged that he was conned by Putin. I don’t hear that from Trump.
It can be explained by both Trump’s (bad or lack of) character, or kompromat, or both. (Or mental illness or demonic possession.)
I doubt that Kim would have kompromat on Trump. I would ascribe that to Trump’s wishful thinking that he can charm anyone.
Even if you want to believe that, why conclude that Trump vs Putin was necessarily more nefarious than your own allowance for Trump vs Kim?
Kim has had no opportunity to blackmail Trump. But see Jonathon Chait’s July 8, 2018 article from New York Magazine questioning if Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987.
See also the Politico review of that article.
Exactly.
Lack of capacity and opportunity for the Kim family and North Korea.
Clear capacity for KGB starting in 1987 when Trump went bankrupt 5 times and no one would loan him money. Trump allegdedly sold his soul to the Russians to get financing.
I agree with Arahant, Gary. And you know that I don’t think anymore of Trump than you do. But Trump has shown us how strange he is, how his need for continued flattery makes him say and do the most reckless things. Obama did a lot of reckless things too, and no once accused him of doing them because someone had something on him. You just can’t explain some people, or their actions.