The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Eighth Edition. The Senile Chief Executive.

January 3, 2026

Yesterday the United States mounted an early morning military operation and removed the chief executive, arguably an illegitimate chief executive, from office and brought him to the United States to face criminal charges, even though the real ability of the US to charge somebody overseas with a crime is dubious and we ignore that when people do that to us.

Later in the day, Donald Trump, also an illegitimate chief executive, gave a press conference.

Trump's comments on the raid on Maduro:

As usual, when he reads a prepared statement, he sounds awful.  While called to address the illegal attack in Venezuela, it meandered into the usual Trump mental mush addressing various Trump favorite topics and fantasies.  Use of the National Guard in various states ended up being addressed by the clearly senile illegal occupant of the Oval Office.¹

This demonstrates senility. There's no doubt about it.

January 9, 2026

There is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me,. . .

Donald Trump.

Need anyone say more?

The 25th Amendment needs to be invoked now.

January 10, 2026

At a meeting with oil company executives, which was odd in and of itself.

"Hold on, I need to look at my beautiful ballroom” — then got up and walked to the door.

Wow. What a view! This is the door to the ballroom!

The man is a child, but then, that's what senility does. 

It's worth finding the video.  Trump is clearly senile and its at the point where nobody can hide it.  Rubio is sitting there grim faced, because that's all he can do.

It's not, I'd note, just me that's been noticing a rapidly declining cognitive ability in Trump.

Tim O’Brien on the decline of The Donald

"He talks in circles that would defy Magellan to make sense of."

Trump Picks the Weirdest Moment to Hype Up His New Ballroom

Big meeting? Perfect time to brag about his vanity project!

If Trump was a partner in a law or accounting firm, he'd have been wheeled out the door by now.  If he ran a business on his own his employees would be jumping ship.  The man is mentally gone.

At this point its absolutely the case that these conversations are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, taking place behind Trump's back.  Rubio, Vance, etc., are discussing his mental incapacity. Rubio is full blown on correction mode all the time.  Vance is hiding most of the time.  The big question is who is angling for what.  We have no reason to believe that these characters all get along with each other, and we know that the Trump administration basically breaks down into 1) National Conservatives, using him as a distraction (Vance, Miller), 2) New Apostolic Reformation Evangelicals who figure that Trump is divinely charged with a mission to bring in a new, Evangelical, Christian age (not in the admin, but think Mike Johnson), 3) rank sycophants who worship Trump unthinkingly and 4) rank opportunist (Marco Rubio).  Any one of these groups save for the sycophants would have pushed Trump out by now, but no one group is really in agreement with what comes next.  Opportunists don't want the NatCons or the NAR people in, the NAR people don't want the opportunists or the NatCon people in, the NatCon people know that this is their only chance.

January 15, 2025

January 16, 2026

Invoke the 25th Amendment you cowardly bastards.

January 17, 2026

He's completely unhinged:

The 25th Amendment needs to be applied now.  Trump is a madman.  This is utterly insane and anyone supporting it is a complete moron.

Congress, step in.

Section 4

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

     

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Do your duty.  Congress can declare itself to be the body that declares Donald Trump to be Bat Shit Crazy.  If it was a Democratic Congress, presumably it would.  It only requires a few Republicans who are sycophantic toadies to go get it done. 

Get it done.

January 19, 2026.

Okay, MAGA adherents and Republican politicians, explain why this isn't batshit crazy:

cont:

The Atlantic.

Trump’s Letter to Norway Should Be the Last Straw

Will Republicans in Congress ever step in?

The man is bat shit crazy.  He needs to be removed.

From that article:

Yet what matters isn’t the specific phrases, but the overall message: Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland.

Congress, screw up your courage and do something. 

January 20, 2026

Trump gave a long, rambling, completely unhinged speech today in Europe.

This is effectively the final constitutional test.  The Emperor Has NO Clothes.  He's batshit crazy and everyone knows it.  If the cabinet will not act, it's because their souls are corrupt.  It's up to Congress at this point, and the Republicans are gutless cowards.

If they don't act, this is the end of the United States as a great power, and likely the end of the American economic era.  It's a disaster.

It's also the end of this edition. Trump's dementia is now in the rapidly accelerating stage and we've entered a new stage of frightful senility.  I had predicted the application of the 25th Amendment over a year ago.  What I hadn't counted on was evil men like Stephen Miller, or complete fools like Scott Bessett.  It's doubtful that it'll be applied now.  Like Hitler's minions, they're rather go down in the bunker, or can't realize that they are.

May God help the USA.

Last edition:

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Seventh Edition. Night of Camp David

Labels: 1960s, 1965, 2020s, 2025, 2026, 25th Amendment Watch List, Adam Kinzinger, Donald Trump, Health, History repeating itself or at least rhyming, Mental Health, Predictions, Republican Party, Rod Dreher, The Madness of King Donald

So now what, and what did we actually do?

Yesterday, early, the Armed Forces of the United States staged a commando raid and removed Maduro et ux from Venezuela.

The raid was loss free, which has caused one knowledgeable person I know to speculate that the Venezuelan military was in on it, and that it basically amounted to a coup in favor of  Delcy Rodríguez of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

Pity poor Maria Corina Machado, the opposition leader we supposedly favored.  I guess she's yesterday's news.

Anyhow, yesterday the senile illegitimate occupant of the White House, Donald Trump, came on and gave a rambling press conference full of weird diversions and babble, but he indicated "we", i.e.,  the United States, was going to run the country.

A commando raid an occupation does not make.  Venezuela remains in control of the Venezuelan military and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

And Rodríguez rejected the assertion that Maduro has been replaced.  No doubt a United Socialist Party isn't going opt accept the doddering old fool's suggestion that the country's oil is going to be taken back over by American oil companies, which aren't really American, but are international for the most part.

So what actually happened?

Well, if we look at it positively, a really bad guy was replaced by somebody we don't know all that much about, but who shows every sign as being just as much of a socialist as Maduro.  Maybe she'll be better simply because she's educated.  And perhaps she'll try to take Venezuela out of the drug business, although there are no doubt powerful forces that would resist that.

Maybe that's all we were trying to achieve, but based on the babble, Trump apparently believed that we were actually going to take over the country.

If the Administration was trying to do that, it fell way short of it, or so it would appear, and we're going to have to come up with some cover story for our failure, or we're going to have to outright invade the country.

I don't see that latter thing happening.

Which brings me to this.  I don't think there was ever a plan to take over the country.  I think the military needed a way out of this expensive endless project and this is what they came up with.  Donny was told the results would be that he could install Marco Rubio as Maximilian I of Venezuela.  Rubio probably went along with the whole thing as well.

Frenchy would be emperor of Mexico, Ferdinand Maximilian Josef Maria.

So now the project is divert Don while the sailors and soldiers are sent to new projects.

But, a military in the hands of the senile remains pretty dangerous to everyone, including the nation they are supposed to serve.

2028 Election, Part I. The Preview of Coming Attractions Editions.

December 19, 2025

 And the 2028 Presidential Season has begun.  Erika Kirk of Turning Point USA has endorsed J. D. Vance.

And yes, it's way, way, early.

But perhaps its not surprising.  Trump's mentally departing the stage and chance are good that he'll be out of office in the next few months, Vance is probably looking towards his future right now.  His best chances for that position, of course, would be if Trump is escorted out of the building babbling about being the greatest and sent to a gilded retirement home.

But if that doesn't occur, the knives will be coming out before 2028.  Marco Rubio will not have sat through four years of soul corrupting dementia not to take a run at the White House.  No doubt others are in the wings.

One who may be in the wings, if I'm wrong on his being too demented to carry on in any fashion, is Donald Trump. Everyone keeps noting that he's constitutionally barred but he has no regard for the law in the first place and his threads to run need to be taken seriously.

On Vance, he's a true NatCon, although a recent convert to the philosophy, and his being backed by Turning Point means something, assuming that Turning Point doesn't fly apart or become highly diminished (which I think it will).  It's hard to know exactly what's going on, but it might be suspected that it's probable that Kirk's coming out now has the backing of other significant NatCon figures, who know that they need to put their man in power now (Trump really isn't their man, but their tool).  A figure like Rubio would turn the clock back.

And so the race is on.

December 22, 2025

It wasn't until listening to the weekend shows that I learned that Marco Rubio has endorsed Vance as well.

That's really interesting, and frankly surprising.

Cont:

And now the rumors are circulating, probably correctly, that Ted Cruz will be running.

Moreover. . . .

The NatCon nerve center and author of Project 2025 starts to come unglued as the Trump Administration does:

Top Heritage Officials Flee to Mike Pence’s Nonprofit as Think Tank Fractures

The conservative movement continues to splinter about how to deal with its most controversial voices

I've always thought Roberts' organization would maneuver to put Vance in power in 2026 and shove aside the Pine Tree flag folks, who don't have the intellectual capacity to run a government.  The risk has always been that they'd hold the hand they were dealt too long.

They may have.

And Pence, who didn't look like a good candidate before, is starting to with some folks.