25th Amendment Watch, 25th Edition and CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 161st Edition. The Time is Running Out Edition.

In looking for a photo to caption this, I found this fascinating World War Two (apparently) vintage Heuer advertisement featuring Swiss soldiers all synchronizing their watches.  Heuer is a Swiss company but was not part of the "Dirty Dozen" that sort of ignored Swiss neutrality laws in order to export watches to the British Army.  Fascinating advertisement.  Posted under the Fair Use exception.

October 4, 2026

Running out of time.

We're starting a new edition of this for several reasons.

To start off with, King Donald has been in rare form the last few days.  Whether these qualify as 25th Amendment events or not is another matter. They probably don't.  But they do show the titanic weirdness of the man.

The first was a long rambling post about trying to enact Permanent Daylight Savings Time.

Personally, I hate Daylight Savings Time and I always have.  It was a stupid idea when it came into being, and it still is.  I'd like to see it go.  But King Donald and some Republicans, and probably some Democrats as well, would like for it to be adopted year around.

This is dumb, and yes that's spelled with a "b".

The reason it's dumb is that the sun rises and sets when it does with no regard to the opinions and musings of man.  In real terms, there's a real high noon, and a real midnight. The clock should be based on that.

The stupidity of Daylight Savings Time somehow accepts the concept that by moving the arms of the clock, it somehow changes that.  What Daylight Savings Time is, in real terms, is Go To Work An Hour Earlier.  Apparently we're dim enough, however, to accept that if we pretend to move the arms of the clock, we're still going to work at 8:00 a.m. in the summer, rather than 7:00 a.m.

We're not.

Anyhow, Donalds wants the bill to pass.   If it does, at least it looks like the 119th Congress did something.  Here's his long screed:

As can be seen, Trump is personally blaming this on Tom Cotton, which isn't fair.  What this means is there aren't enough votes in the Senate to take it up and pass it, even if a majority in the Senate are in favor of it.

Cotton's reasons:

Cotton has been a pretty consistent back of Trump's all along, so this is really ironic.  He's getting stabbed in the back by the guy he supported, which isn't surprising.  Everything Trump touches gets destroyed. 

Cotton's reasons here are solid.  Everything he's stated here is correct.  I can personally recall the 1974 experiment with this.

Sunday, January 6, 1974. Messing with the time.

In a bizarre response to the ongoing oil crisis, the U.S. began a trial of year around daylight savings time.

I recall it well, as when I walked to grade school in the morning, it was pretty dark.  We still walked, however.

What I noted there has been noted by supporters of King Donald's proposal.  Kids don't walk to school as much as the culture's addiction to laziness and automotive transportation actually increased since 1974.

Anyhow, what are the reasons for this absurdity?

Golfing and tennis.  Oh, and "farmers want it".

On that last item, farmers don't care one whit about this.  They're going to work when they are going to work.  DST doesn't change that at all.

Indeed, I've always heard the justification for DST being the one that Trump is giving.  You can go out and play sports when you get home from work as you'll have more daylight.

M'eh.

The reason, anyhow, this appears here is that Trump posted, and therefore wrecked, Cotton's cell phone number. That's really mean.  Only a self centered asshole would do a thing like that.  Trump's been asked to justify it in a press interview and just repeats his reasons that he wants the vote.

Personally, and I have no way of really knowing this, I think he wants it as the Republican 119th Congress has done nothing and now we're headed into a general election with inflation ramping up, an  illegal war going on, and none of the list of usual suspects excuses working anymore.

Also for the same reason, Trump's been running around giving campaign rallies to the true believers.  I haven't tracked where he's been going, but I've read that it tends to be in places where there's a lot of MAGA.  Quietly some candidates in battleground states are trying to distance themselves from him.  Anyhow, at one such rally Trump, who didn't graduate from Wharton with honors and never appeared on the Dean's list, stated:

I am a person with very high intelligence—one of the highest IQs in the world.

Okay, this is at the really weird level.

Generally really intelligent people don't run around saying "I'm high IQ".  Trump says it all the time, which suggests that he's really insecure about his intelligence.

Frankly, at this point, if anyone believes he's super intelligent, they're probably either stupid or incredibly gullible.  MAGA by now is the bottom of the bell curve in intelligence and ignorance.

What's going on with the 25th?

It's rather clear at this point that my prediction that the 25th Amendment would be applied after the first 18 months of Trump's illegal occupation of the Oval Office were off the mark.  This probably should be regarded as a failed prediction.

Having said that, I saw somebody hinting at the possibility that their similar thought might not be.

I think it's a long shot right now, but there's still a chance, and a not insubstantial one, that a backroom plot, basically, remains in place.  The same basic parameters would be in operation, replacing Trump with J.D. Vance before the 2028 election.

My thought was that it would occur before the 2026 election in order that the GOP had a chance to save itself before that election. Clearly that was wrong.  But that in and of itself might be part of what's going on.  The various factions in the Trump backrooms that supported his campaign and which boost their pet theories on everything may very well have realized that the results would be unpopular.  Economic radicals behind the tariffs, for instance, likely were aware that they'd be hugely disruptive.  They may have given up the 2026 midterms from the onset.  They likely didn't appreciate that Trump would start a war with Iran, but most of the rest of the stuff Trump has done has backers within the administration.  All of those people also know that they're in the minority in terms of American culture so Trump is their best chance of making this stuff happen.

But, if I'm correct, at some point Trump has to go and take the stench out with him.  There will come a day, and it's probably in November, when Trump will be personally blamed for what's occurred.  The Republicans are going to lose both houses of Congress in a month.  A Fall Guy will be necessary, and Trump has made himself that person.  He's even asked for people to imagine him on the ballot.

A lot of people will.

After November 3 being a Trumpite in most places will have lost its value.  A lot of the Republican politicians who have supported him all along will grow silent, or more silent than they already are.  Harriet Hageman will likely not be heard to mention his name.  John Barrasso won't either.  Poor Chuck Gray, who has campaigned more than anyone else in Wyoming on being a deep lover of all things Trump, will be lost, but even he will rally to claim that "true conservative values"  need to be defended.

Anyhow, the point is Republicans are already dog trotting away from Trump. Trump is, at the same time, stabbing some of them in the back.  Chip Roy got it, and now Cotton is getting it.  After the vote in November, there will be very little reason to be a Trump backer in the GOP, save for being in a district of diehard MAGAs, which is a declining population.

The National Conservatives and Christian Nationalist still need Trump, however.  Nobody else is going to help them get in their worldview.  They can sort of home that Vance will, but Vance is too savvy to adopt anything fully that's going to wipe out his hopes of being President.

And hence the gamble.

Right now, it may well be the case that NatCons and Christian Nationalist are seeing how far they can have Trump carry on as a sort of dictator until it's too late, and Vance's chances in 2028 are destroyed.  That may have already occured.  Letting that occur might be one reason that Marco Rubio hasn't acted.  But my guess is that they're riding along and just don't quite know where that point is.

It might be coming very soon.  If Trump makes an effort to steal the 2026 midterms, and he will, that might present the opportunity.  If it isn't taken then, it has to be taken some time in 2027.  2028 will probably be too late.

October 10, 2026

This man is a titanic narcissist and deeply mentally ill.

Trump called Letitia James a "dog".

James has been a controversial Attorney General for the State of New York.  She went after Trump some time ago unsuccessfully.  I don't know what brought her back to mind for Trump, but she's been in the news recently over the Cornell rape story.  I'll have an item on that shortly, but in a comment he noted he feels "badly" for the seven men accused.

Eh?

It's hard to ignore that Trump is rapy wealthy men's best friend.

October 12, 2026

And you know what they're doing? They go straight down, you know, you can make those drill bits talk. You can make 'em sing, you can make them go, they go down. New York's over here, Pennsylvania-- they go down and they take a sharp left. And they suck our oil out. Can you believe it? Lines of different states, and you'll see one has Cadillacs, because they like Cadillacs better than they like Mercedes, but one has an Escalade, and one has a 50 year old Chevy. And you're talking about 3 ft. It's a line that goes right up. One has some beautiful drilling plants, and one has no drilling plants, it's got no money, it's got poverty.

Donald Trump.

This is a statement, I believe, on horizontal drilling.  It's posted as an example of his rambling speech.  This was just delivered over the weekend.

Cont:

Regarding the supposed agreement to cease hitting energy targets:

Reporter: You said Russia and Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire but both sides say they have not. 

Trump: They agree. You know why? Because I said you agree. That’s why. They agreed because I said they agreed.

Well, they didn't agree.  Apparently King Donald's word doesn't mean that much.

Related threads:

Daylight Savings Time, Dangers, and Crabbiness.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Agriculture, children, Daylight Savings Time, Economics, Growing up in the 1970s, Harriet Hageman, nature, Wyoming

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 160th Edition. On being a worthless sycophant

Labels: 2020s, 2026, 2026 Election, Cynthia Lummis, Donald Trump, Republican Party, The Second Trump Administration, Wyoming, Zeitgeist

25th Amendment Watch, 24th Edition. He's crying for help, or completely insane.

Labels: 25th Amendment Watch List, Cowards, Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, John Barrasso, megalomania, Mental Health, Mike Johnson, New Mexico, The Madness of King Donald, Xi Jinping

Tonight Der Führer will speak to you of the Reichstag Fire, um, no, Donald Trump will speak to you of the stolen 2020 election. Same lie, same theme, by the same people, 93 years later. Let's blow American democracy's brains out to calm the wounded feelings of childish Donald Trump, loser.

By Eddie Adams, Associated Press - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/world/asia/vietnam-execution-photo.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=153554473

Tonight Donald Trump will come on television to lie.  

The lie has been told before, many times.  Terrible demonized opponents, most probably Communists, have tried to subvert the the will of The People.  It's a crisis.  You must sacrifice your civil liberties, even if only briefly, in order to allow the State to take on this terrible, terrible danger.

Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party told the lie in 1933.  Communists, the German people were told, had burned down the Reichstag.  The solution was to put the gun to the head of the fragile German democracy and blow its brains out.

Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and the State of February 28, 1933

In virtue of Article 48(2) of the German Constitution, the following is decreed as a defensive measure against communist acts of violence endangering the state:

Article 1

Sections 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Therefore, restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right of association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications, warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations, as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

Article 2

If in a state the measures necessary for the restoration of public security and order are not taken, the Reich Government may temporarily take over the powers of the highest state authority.

Article 3

According to orders decreed on the basis of Article 2 by the Reich Government, the authorities of states and provinces, if concerned, have to abide thereby.

Article 4

Whoever provokes, or appeals for, or incites the disobedience of the orders given out by the supreme state authorities or the authorities subject to them for execution of this decree, or orders given by the Reich Government according to Article 2, is punishable—insofar as the deed is not covered by other decrees with more severe punishments—with imprisonment of not less than one month, or with a fine from 150 up to 15,000 reichsmarks.

Whoever endangers human life by violating Article 1 is to be punished by sentence to a penitentiary, under mitigating circumstances, with imprisonment of not less than six months and, when violation causes the death of a person, with death, under mitigating circumstances, with a penitentiary sentence of not less than two years. In addition the sentence may include confiscation of property.

Whoever provokes or incites an act contrary to public welfare is to be punished with a penitentiary sentence, under mitigating circumstances, with imprisonment of not less than three months.

Article 5

The crimes which under the Criminal Code are punishable with penitentiary for life are to be punished with death: i.e., in Paragraphs 81 (high treason), 229 (poisoning), 306 (arson), 311 (properties), and 324 (general poisoning). Insofar as a more severe punishment has not been previously provided for, the following are punishable with death, life imprisonment, or imprisonment not to exceed 15 years:

1. Anyone who undertakes to kill the Reich President or a member or a commissioner of the Reich Government or of a state government, or provokes such a killing, or agrees to commit it, or accepts such an offer, or conspires with another for such a murder;

1. Translated from Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1933, p. 83.

2. Anyone who under Paragraph 115(2) of the Criminal Code (serious rioting) or under Paragraph 125(2) of the Criminal Code (serious disturbance of the peace) commits the act with arms or cooperates consciously and intentionally with an armed person;

3. Anyone who commits a kidnapping under Paragraph 239 of the Criminal Code with the intention of making use of the kidnapped person as a hostage in the political struggle.

This decree is in force from the day of its announcement.

Berlin, February 28, 1933

The Reich President von Hindenburg 

The Reich Chancellor A Hitler

The Minister of Interior Frick

The Minister of Justice Dr. Gürtner

You are going to be told that tonight.

The 2020 election was stolen, Donald Trump will lie.  It must have been, as his fragile toddler's ego can't handle if it wasn't. Surrounded by sycophants who help sooth his suspicions that he's dumb (spelled, as he just apparently learned, with a "b"), he truly can't handle the truth.  So the solution is to put the gun to the head of American democracy and blow its brains out.

Trump's administration, with its own goals and desires, all of them anti democratic, have their own aims in this.  MAGA is a set of willing dupes, drunk on the lies and apparently unwilling to get up from the bar stool and get a ride home.

There's a very real chance that Trump will succeed at this.  From today, until November, democracy will be besieged.  If the Republicans cannot completely subvert the November election, they'll seek to subvert it thereafter.  If the Democrats win in the fall, the period from November until January will be an all out effort to destroy the results of the election.  It won't even be subtle.

And sadly, many Republican members of Congress, like John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, will go all in to help Trump even though, in backrooms and with their close friends, they undoubtedly think he's a lunatic.  

The question usually is for something like this, what can be done.  Well, being honest and open about your honesty from now until January is about all most can do.  Don't vote for the Chuck Gray's, Harriet Hagemans, Reid Rasners and Megan Degenfelders.  Be true to your conscience and the country.

And frankly, don't bother with Trump's parade of lies tonight.  Trump's only real power is that people who surround him are convinced they will not bear the price of his sins.  They will, at some point.  Sending the message that we're done listening to Trump starts letting them know that the bill is coming due very soon.

The 2026 Election, 15th Edition. Trump will attempt to steal the election.

Trump fired the last three members of the Election Assistance Commission, the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials.

Donald Trump does not want to go to jail.

When the Democrats resume Congressional power in January, 2027, Trump's effectiveness as a President will be over. Frankly, he's not terribly effective right now.  He is terribly disruptive.

But the chances of his going to prison will climb enormously.  He stands a serious risk of being impeached and tossed out, to be followed by being sent to prison.

Bare minimum, his endless vanity projects will be done for, as will most of his power.

Trump will do whatever is necessary to avoid the outcome of the 2027 election.  It's going to be severely bad.

And I'll give him about a 60% chances of pulling it off, aided by people like John Barrasso, Harriet Hageman, and Chuck Gray.

Last edition:

The 2026 Election, 14th Edition. The “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor" edition.

Labels: 120th Congress, 2020s, 2026, 2026 Election, Alaska, Chuck Gray, Colorado, Distributism, Enemies of Public Lands, Graham Platner, Lisa Engebretsen, The 2021 Insurrection, Wyoming Freedom Caucus, You heard it here first

25th Amendment Watch, 20th Edition. The Frontotemporal Dementia Edition.

The Lunatic of Étretat

Donald Trump has convinced himself that somebody is sabotaging the reflecting pool because the algae is back.  He's deployed the National Guard and the Park police, and the police have been issuing a few citations to people who are taking pieces of floating Rhino Lining.

A Little Science

What's going on here?

Well, it sure ain't sabotage.

In terms of the actual situation, what's going on is basic science.  Any kid in advance studies in high school, or  probably junior high, could have replicated the result theoretically with very little effort.

The reflecting is a large pool of pretty much stable, which is not to say stagnant, water.  Still water, in other words.  In warm weather, any large body of still water will develop algae and in some areas experience algae blooms.  Just go to some local cow ponds and take a look, you'll see algae.

Algae is, also, a great lover of CO2.  Indeed, it's a tremendous friend to humanity as its capable of sucking up so much CO2.  In a distant prior era of the Earth's history there was a time when the oceans were pretty much one gigantic algae bloom. The era ended as the algae sucked so much algae out, over a long period of time, it depressed the Earth's temperature and caused a massive ice age.

As more and more CO2 gets pumped into the atmosphere temperatures get hotter and algae loves it.  All the Chuck Grays weeing in their pants about climate change being a big isn't going to change it. You may not care about science, and science may not care about you.  It just wrecks things when you stupidly ignore it.

When the recent Rhino Lining was done, another thing that was done was to change the water source for the pool.  The water system had sourced water from the Tidal Basin, but it was switched to municipal water on the thought it would be clearer. That thought was a good one, as it should be.  The Park Service had planned on doing something along these lines for years.  As it is, the pool's water is circulated through piping to a building nearby and run through a series of filters and water purifiers. The Park Service had wanted to put in a "nano bubbler" to kill algae with tiny bubbles of ozone.  There were a series of contractors that asked for that very job.

Well, Donald Trump became fascinated at some point with Washington D.C.'s appearance, and perhaps not without some justification.  Some monuments had in fact, apparently, been allowed to become run down, and some fountains disconnected. That is in fact inexcusable and his efforts, giving credit where credit is due, have lead to the restoration of some of these features.  Infamously, of course, it also lead the absolute vandalization of the White House, both in the cheap tacky crap that Trump pasted up everywhere, as well as in the ripping down of an entire wing.  The cheap crap can be pulled off and tossed in the dumpster, but the demolishing of a wing is another problem entirely.

Then there's the pool.

Any smart person would have hired an engineering firm to deal with the problem if something needed to be done.  Not Trump.  He just had a no bid process done and sent the work to a contractor on a no bid process, something that's only supposed to be used for emergencies. Frankly, in my view, that was illegal. There was no emergency.  But Trump wanted it to look purty for the 250th Anniversary of American Independence, an ironic thing as he is the very model of aristocratic dolt that the country was seeking separation from in 1776.

At a bare minimum, the water system should have been shocked to kill residual algae.

Well, the results were predictable.  The Rhino Lining was put in, an abomination in and of itself, the water got hot, and algae came for the party.  To compound the matter, it was decided to pour hydrochloric acid in the pool to kill the algae, which instead had the result of peeling up the fresh Rhino Lining.  Trump can't admit failure, even though he has had a boatload of them, and even though a major failure, a lost war against Iran, should be his primary concern right now, he's focused on the pool, having people arrested for vandalization.

He is, in fact, the vandal.

Frontotemporal dementia, an unfortunate primer.

Trump is afflicted with Frontotemporal dementia.

I've seen Frontotemporal dementia up close in personal.  I don't say that lightly.

My mother developed the disease late in her life.  She was 90 years old when she died.  In looking it up, I was shocked to realize that it is now just a little over a decade ago.  I thought it was further back than that.

Anyhow, it's a horrible disease.

I can't really recall exactly when it became evident that she had it, and that's one of the problems with FTD.  The disease is really slow moving and therefore its early manifestation may be baffling and unrecognized to those who are near the person afflicted.  According to the May Clinic, it usually starts to hit people relatively early, when they are in their 40s and 50s, but may occur later.  Looking back, my mother may actually have started to manifest her symptoms in the normal age range, but in her case it was masked, if it did, by another condition that was nearly incapacitating.  She got in a few, but very few, good years between recovering from that and the onset of the disease.

Mayo states:

Early symptoms of frontotemporal dementia

These often involve changes in behavior, personality or language rather than memory. These symptoms may be mistaken for a mental health condition at first.

Early symptoms may include:

• Changes in personality or behavior, such as acting in ways that seem out of character.
• Reduced ability to understand or respond to other people's feelings.
• Trouble planning, organizing or making decisions.
• Repeating words or actions.
• Changes in speech or language, such as trouble finding the right word.
• Lack of interest, also called apathy.

Behavioral changes in frontotemporal dementia

The most common symptoms of frontotemporal dementia involve extreme changes in behavior and personality. These include:

• Behavior that seems socially inappropriate or out of character.
• Reduced ability to understand or respond to other people's feelings, a lack of empathy.
• Lack of judgment.
• Loss of inhibition.
• Lack of interest, also known as apathy. Apathy can be mistaken for depression.
• Compulsive behaviors such as tapping, clapping, or smacking lips over and over.
• Changes in eating habits. People with FTD may overeat or prefer sweets and carbohydrates.
• Eating things that are not food.
• Repeatedly placing objects in the mouth.

Speech and language symptoms

Some subtypes of frontotemporal dementia lead to changes in language ability or loss of speech. Subtypes include primary progressive aphasia (PPA), including the semantic variant and the nonfluent or agrammatic variant.

These conditions can cause:

• Increasing trouble using and understanding written and spoken language. People with FTD may not be able to find the right word to use in speech.
• Trouble naming things. People with FTD may replace a specific word with a more general word, such as using "it" for pen.
• Not understanding the meaning of words.
• Hesitant speech that may use short, simple sentences.
• Making mistakes in sentence building.

Primary progressive apraxia of speech is a brain condition that mainly affects how speech is produced, which is distinct from an aphasia. People with the condition know exactly what they want to say, but the brain has increasing difficulty planning and coordinating the movements of the lips, tongue and jaw needed to speak. As a result, speech may sound slow, effortful, choppy or distorted, even though understanding, reading and thinking may not be affected early on.

Movement symptoms

Rare subtypes of frontotemporal dementia cause movements similar to those seen in Parkinson's disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Movement symptoms may include:

• Tremor.
• Rigidity.
• Muscle spasms or twitches.
• Poor coordination.
• Trouble swallowing.
• Muscle weakness.
• Laughing or crying at times that don't match the situation.
• Falls or trouble walking.

Frontotemporal dementia versus Alzheimer's disease dementia

Frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease are both types of dementia, but they affect the brain in different ways.

Frontotemporal dementia often begins at a younger age, usually between ages 40 and 65. Alzheimer's disease is more common in older adults.

Memory loss may not be an early symptom. In Alzheimer's disease, memory loss is often one of the first symptoms.

Frontotemporal dementia is sometimes mistaken for a mental health condition or Alzheimer's disease, especially in early stages.

Sometimes the clinical features of frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease overlap and can lead to a hard time diagnosing the condition.

A couple of problems with the disease is that its rare for one person to exhibit all the symptoms.  

My mother was an extremely physically fit person before she fell ill, and recovered that once she recovered.  This was the case even into her decline into dementia for a long time.  As part of that, she had a very strong routine that helped mask and even control the decline.  As it started off, you could tell that she wasn't right, but not to the extent that it was apparent what was going on by any means.

Then the obsessions came.

That's where Donald Trump is at right now.

My mother became obsessed with snow, and overweight people.  We living in a snowy region, in normal years, and she came from an even snowier one.  But one winter arrived and she could not stand the presence of snow.  She shoveled the lawn.  I repeatedly tried to get her to stop doing it, but she wouldn't. 

The house became a mess, but she'd also destructively clean some thing, including things that didn't belong to her. She really went after, for example the finish on a muscle car I had at the time.  

She commented on people being "fat" constantly, and lost any filter she had about it and would comment about it anywhere.  Indeed, she lost her speaking filter in general.

Throughout this decline she lived on her own.  It would have been impossible for a person to live with her at some point.  As things grew worse I knew that I needed to do something, but frankly doing something is easier said than done.  Or perhaps I was just cowardly about it.  At any rate, she took up keeping spoiled meat and it made her extremely sick. That put her in the hospital, and an ER doc diagnosed her on the spot, and to her face, which was a blessing.

After that the decline just got worse and worse, but again, it was slow.  I can't remember how long she was in assisted living.  A few years, anyway.  Eventually her heart gave out.

Where Donald Trump is at

Trump is now at that obsessive stage.  He's absolutely fixated on some trivial things, those things being architectural monuments.  He can get through days and even be fairly lucid, but at night it comes back.  He's sick.  Like my mother shoveling snow from the lawn, he can't grasp the reality of algae in a pool.  

He's also lost his filter with and about women, like my mother did with overweight people.  He's always had a predatory relationship with women anyhow, and this turns out to be a classic aspect of male dementia.  I recall when my mother was dying of dementia reading an article by a female newspaper columnist whose father was enduring the same thing.  It's a nightmare for the adult child, and she was openly wishing for the death of her father.  She hated to visit him in the nursing home, and frankly I hated to visit my mother in assisted living.  In her case, her very elderly father had pretty much forgotten who she was, that never occurred to my mother, but she forgot other things, had her mother died, for instance, and how to speak English on one occasion, and her father had become obsessive about sex, even asking if the daughter knew anyone who might have sex with him.

As noted that's actually fairly common in male dementia.  Demented men slide into sexual depravity in some instances due to the disease.  Trump arrived at sexual depravity all on his own early on, but now he's routinely calling women whom he should respect insulting names, or worse yet, pet names.  He can't keep from commenting on their appearance.

This is all going to get much worse.

What's to be done?

As the few people who stop in here routinely know, I've long been of the opinion that Trump was mentally declining and now that it's obvious what he has, it's pretty apparent that he was exhibiting signs of it his first term.  Indeed, you can go back to his earlier interviews and find a much different, albeit never admirable, person.  The disease has robbed him of his sanity.

The people around him know this.  His cabinet from his first term have been open about the horrors they experienced, although some of them leading into the last election still supported him.  Susan Wiles is apparently at the exasperated point.  Apparently even Scott Bessent, a complete toady, has been leaking.

Given that his condition is so apparent for those who can see it, I thought the 25th Amendment would be invoked this month.  It still maybe, or maybe later, but it now appears that something else is going on.

One of the things that is going on, I suspect, is that National Conservatives are riding Trump as far as they can up to the November election.  They dream of an all white, all Christian, illiberal democracy they cannot win at the ballot box.  Viktor Orbán was their poster child.*  J. D. Vance is their candidate.  Vance can't get elected without being elevated to the Oval Office during Trump's term, but he also can't be seen doing the dirty work, much of which remains to be done.  Worst of all, however, from a NatCon prospective, maybe Vance, who has had many names and been many people in his short life, might not be a NatCon after all.  He has to be tested in the fire, and that fire is occurring right now.

Of course, Marco Rubio needs Vance consumed by that fire, and so far the fire has mostly been consuming him.  Rubio, however, will never be the NatCon choice.  His background is too suspicious.  Indeed, he's been a fair number of other things in his life, and his path through it is not as linear as Vance's.

If all this sounds pretty fish, I get it.  But again, I have experience with it.  When a person begins to decline, you find that people will step in to take advantage of them.  I had that occur as my mother declined. And other people are there to give you bad advice, often because that serves their own interest or world views.  I was lucky in that I had so much help from my family, including family members who my mother had not been nice to.

In Trump's case, I don't know that there is anyone at all who is actually his friend.  He doesn't appear to have any outside of his immediate family.  Maybe his family are his friends, maybe.  Melania Trump apparently divides her time between Florida and New York and has a reputation as being a helicopter mother over her one child, Barron. As we've posted elsewhere as recently as today, we're frankly skeptical of this match being a normal love match.  Trump's 24 years older, and even bigger margin than existed between Trump and Marla Maples, who was 18 years his junior.  Maples seems to be more of a real match, but I could be way of the mark.  It does seem certain that her interest in her son is genuine, however.  Anyhow, in Melania we don't see an Edith Wilson by a long shot.

Of course there are Trump's sons and daughters by his prior marriages.  But none of them are hanging around on a daily basis making sure their father doesn't fall down and not get up.

There are the MAGA sycophants of course.  Some of these people are NatCons, so they're in the NatCon camp.  Others are useful idiots for the NatCons.  Some are just weirdos and oddballs, or people with unique agendas. They have nowhere else to go.  Should Trump slump over and fall to sleep forever today, J. D. Vance is not going to keep Bessent, Lutnik, Kennedy, Miller or Hegseth around, and they know it.  They have nowhere else to go.  So they are, truly, like the Germans who rode it out in Hitler's bunker.  Not out of conviction, but because the 3d Shock Army is outside.

For the good of the country, the 25th Amendment needs to be invoked.  Will it?  Well, we thought it would, and if we're right about the NatCons, there's a chance that it will be. They have to know that if they don't invoke it, when November comes their only chance of obtaining their dream illiberal state is basically a coup.  Trump can undoubtedly be talked into it, and many of the street level MAGAs can be relied upon to be Trump's SA, or put in the current zeitgeist, the king's own loyalist militia.  But most people aren't going there, and the reaction would be huge.

In a very real sense, many in the thinking categories discussed above hope that Trump will just experience what Jimi Hendrix sang and that he "may wake up in the morning, to find that he is dead".  He'd be off to the particular judgment in the next world and they'd cynically lament him in this, while installing J. D. as his successor, and latching on to the pliant wails of the extraordinarily easily lead MAGA masses.  Indeed, if they have reason to believe that this is soon, that's the best strategy of all.

If Trump simply passes, they have their ride to the treasury made easy.

In the meantime, this is phenomenally scary, and sad.  Trump's an old man with a very heavy burden of sin whom nobody is doing anything to address in an existential sense.  He's raving in his dementia, mostly at night.  Those advancing their own agendas, if I'm right, are comfortable with the increasing insanity and destruction this all brings.

June 23, 2026

Politics

‘I like their money’: Trump threatens lawsuits against ABC for reporting on Reflecting Pool

June 24, 2026

Simply weird beyond belief:

The President of the United States:

0:03 / 0:04

1:20 PM · Jun 23, 2026

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Footnotes

*It's Giorgia Meloni who has actually risen over the past two years to replace Orbán and Trump as the leader of the intellectual wing of National Conservatism, but she's not an illiberal democrat.

Last edition:

King Donald's War, Part 8 and CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 140th Edition, 25th Amendment Watch Nineteenth Edition: L'arche De La Défaite Édition

Labels: Donald Trump, King Donald's War, L'arche De La Défaite, Naïve monarchism, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration, United States and Israel v. Iran, Zeitgeist