Donald Trump is a "brain-eating disease"

Towards the end of 2017, the New York Times' roving international columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote from Mumbai.   He began by saying what I have also felt:  Trying to cover Donald Trump is equivalent to "having a brain-eating disease."

Friedman went on to explain:  "His indecent behavior, and nonstop outrageous tweets and actions, force you as a commentator into a terrible choice:  either ignore it all and risk normalizing Trump's excesses or write about him constantly and risk not having time to learn and report about the big trends now reshaping the world."

Most days, it's worse than that:   not a choice between Trump and the world, but choosing one Trumpism out of the many, each worse than the last.

Since I wrote yesterday's blog, Trump held his made-for-TV meeting with congressional leaders -- letting the TV cameras watch a staged, 50 minute "negotiating" session to hammer out the decision about the Dreamers Act (DACA) and the Wall.   It was obviously designed to portray the president as the negotiating "stable genius" he had claimed himself to be, just one day before.

What he showed, however is that he has only the thinnest grasp of policy, even immigration which was his signature issue ever since he came down the golden escalator.   He didn't seem to know what Sen. Diane Feinstein meant by "a clean DACA bill" (he readily agreed to do it, only to be quickly corrected by one of his loyalists).   Nor did he have any grasp of what "comprehensive immigration reform" might entail.

He also showed -- before TV cameras and millions of viewers -- that he has no negotiating skills.   He simply agrees with what the last person says, then changes as soon as someone says something different.   So the obvious lesson is that nothing he says or agrees to has any worth.

He made sweeping statements like:   "Whatever you folks come up with, I'll sign it."   But then a moment later insists that "we have to have the wall."

So there was that on Wednesday.   Then, before writing about that, Thursday happened and obliterated it all.    He met in private with another, smaller group to further discuss immigration issues, this time specifically the debated diversity lottery for would-be immigrants from countries that have a low level of applications to come to the U.S.

"Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here? . . .   Why don't we have more people from places like Norway?" the president asked the group, sources told the Washington Post.   The comment was later confirmed by NBC, Buzzfeed, and CNN.

Last month, the New York Times had also reported that Trump had disparaged immigrants from Haiti (saying they "all have AIDS") and from African countries ("who would never go back to their huts once they've seen the U.S.").   Apparently it was a big deal on Dec. 23rd;  but I missed hearing about it, being out of news range for a few days for the holidays.

In response to Thursday's "shithole countries," a White House spokesman has made a general comment about the president standing up for Americans but did not deny the president's derogatory remarks or profanity.

Oh, yes.   What was the big trend reshaping the world that Tom Friedman wanted to write about?   It seems that China and India are leaping light-years ahead of us in digitizing data for identificatory purposes.  In India, they already have completed registering more than 1 billion of their people into a 12 digit ID system based on fingerprints, iris scans, and information like name, address, date of birth, and sex.

Meanwhile, our president has done absolutely nothing to try prevent Russia from interfering in our next election -- just over 10 months away.   In fact, he has never, ever said one derogatory word about Russia or Putin.    It's past strange, and what Robert Mueller has found out probably has a lot to do with Donald Trump's rattled state of mind.

Ralph

PS:   Comments are beginning to come in from people in Norway, saying they don't want to come live in our shithole country.