The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Sixth Edition. The demented panicked Octogenarian edition.

November 15, 2025

Rep. Thomas Massie's wife passed away, and he's remarried.

Trump hates Massie as Massie is not a toady sycophant.  In that vein, he's posted:

This from a guy whose been "married" four times and has cheated on at least three out of the four of his wives, admits that he screwed around, literally, earlier, and who hung around with kiddy diddlers.

What a vile disgusting human being Donald Trump is.

Massie's first wife died a little over a year ago.  They'd been married some 30 years.  His second wife is somebody he's known since 2016 who has worked for Sen. Rand Paul.  FWIW, marriages in that time frame are pretty common for people in Massie's situation.  Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, remarried about two years after the death of his first wife, and when he did marry, it was to somebody he had known for quite some time.

Trump, on the other hand. . . 

November 17, 2025

Q: Your voice sounds rough. Are you feeling alright?

TRUMP: I was shouting at people because they were stupid about something having to do with trade and a country. I blew my stack at these people

Q: Well it sounds like there's a follow up there--

TRUMP: What? I thought you said there was a polyp. I don't want to hear that!

November 18, 2025

Trump had a confrontation with Bloomberg reporter Jennifer Jacobs yesterday on Air Force One in which he once again demonstrated he has dementia

Jennifer Jacobs: “If there’s nothing incriminating in the Epstein files why not…?”

Trump: “Quiet. Quiet, Piggy.” 

Trump's clearing being kept in office by the NatCons as he's unintentionally running cover for them.  This can only go on so long. 

Also, while it didn't at first occur to me, as its so weird, this strikes me as quite misogynistic.  Calling a woman "piggy" is really vile, but it does serve to illustrate Trump's history with women, really.  Going into their dressing rooms, according to one of Epstein's former girlfriends, groping her in front of Epstein, etc.

cont:

There are times I look at him and I see my grandfather. I see that same look of confusion. I see that he does not always seem to be oriented to time and place. His short-term memory seems to be deteriorating. . . [Trump's] lifelong struggles with impulse control are also “deteriorating as well."

Mary Trump.

November 21, 2025

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Sen. Mark Kelly, and Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan, all veterans, released  a video urging member of the armed forces not to follow illegal orders.  Donald Trump is now threatening them with prosecution for sedition, and the death penalty, which is ironic, as Trump is a seditionist.

The government is in the hands of a mad man.

November 28, 2025

Trump had a full blown late night Thanksgiving meltdown.

He's now openly, and obviously, completely unstable.

This wasn't the only example of this.  He also called a reporter stupid for pointing out that assailant who shot two National Guardsmen in Washington D.C. had received asylum from the Trump Administration.

There can be little doubt at this point that Trump is no longer control of himself, and probably only partially in control of the nation.  NatCons behind the administration are likely largely in control, but not fully, which is in part which makes Trump doubly dangerous.  A NatCon coup is basically going on while Trump retains enough authority to be legitimately dangerous.

Having allowed this to go on so long we're now in the situation where it's actually becoming increasingly difficult for the 25th Amendment to be invoked.  By pretending that Trump is not deranged, the bar has been set so high that Trump's supporters will not be able to tell what he actually did that caused him to be removed.  We are, therefore, really gambling now.  We're gambling that his actions don't cause a war, and that the war doesn't see the use of weapons that have largely become unthinkable in modern times. We're gambling that force isn't used against American citizens. And we're gambling that Trump's disregard for the law doesn't set in on a permanent institutional basis.

And about those supporters:

Jonah Goldberg

@JonahDispatch

60 percent of the people who constantly use the phrase “Trump derangement syndrome” and 98% of those who use it as an all-explanatory theory for any inconvenient arguments or facts, suffer from pro-Trump Derangement syndrome. Forget the terminology. If you think any information that make you doubt yourself is crazy, you are in a bubble.

Regarding that deline, the New York Times ran a recent article with this headline.

Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office

President Trump has always used his stamina and energy as a political strength. But that image is getting harder for him to sustain.

The article notes that Trump has reduced his workload 39%.

Also of note, those close to Trump are begging to openly admit that they're stressed and fatigued.  Poor old Mike Johnson has complained about not having a vacation in two years (yeah, well, suck it up, buttercup, I haven't had one for at least twice that long).  Loyal sycophant Karoline Leavitt complained openly about stress recently.

The question now is where all this leads.  Those who can invoke the 25th Amendment may simply have waited too long and now need Trump to do something that anyone would regard as fully insane. . . with the question being what that would be.

cont:

Trump is clearly vindictive and unhinged.  This will set the stage up for wiping out his executive orders, and perhaps reign back in the excessive use of executive orders.

November 30, 2025

Reporter: Walz called for the release of your MRI results

Trump: They can release it. It was perfect like my phone call where I got impeached.

Reporter: What were they looking at? 

Trump: For what? Releasing? 

Reporter: no, what part of your body was the MRI looking at

Trump: I have no idea. It’s just an MRI. It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test and I aced it.

Uh huh. . . 

First of all, I heard Walz's remarks, and he's right. They don't give MRI's for sport. They had some brain thing they were looking into.

And they tell the patient the result. . . if they're functioning and able to understand it.

And as for cognitive tests, the entire nation gets a dose of bat shit demented from Trump weekly. 

December 3, 2025

Not a sign of dementia, but rather of age, Trump is having a hard time staying awake during daytime events.

No doubt this problem is made worse by his staying up late into the night to post rage tweets.

December 8, 2025

President Trump is upset because pardoned Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar is running again as a Democrat.  

Trump, who pardoned him, is accusing him of disloyalty.

Cont:

Trump to ABC's Rachel Scott: "You are the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place. Let me just tell you -- you are an obnoxious-- a terrible reporter. And it's always the same thing with you. I told you."

December 10, 2025

He's clearly not well.

And he has his finger on the nuclear trigger.

Last edition:

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Fifth Edition. He's not okay.

Labels: Donald Trump, Illinois (Chicago), J. B. Pritzker, J. D. Vance, Mental Health, National Conservatism, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration, Weird, You heard it here first

Epstein survivors issue urgent plea to Congress, Trump now wants materials released, and the ultimate corruption of money.

Hmmm. . . that's interesting.  Trump's now okay with it.

Trump and his acolytes went from demanding their release, to absolutely opposing it.  Now they're in favor of it again.

What gives?

Well one thing may simply be that so much time has gone by, these files are now scrubbed.  Sounds conspiratorial, I know, but files can be scrubbed, or lost.

The problem here is that the whole thing sounds so, well, all over the place that an effective scrubbing might be impossible.

Another one is that Trump might already know it won't get past the Senate.  Just yesterday loyal flunky John Barrasso stated he wasn't sure if they'd vote on it or not.  Figures like Barrasso figure their Senate seats are so safe that they're untouchable.  They aren't, and he was running pretty scared last time, but they tend to think that way.

Or it just isn't worth the political capital that it was burning up.  That would suggest that whoever is getting protected just isn't worth this level of damage, particularly that some formerly loyal MAGA's have gone overboard into the lifeboats.  The Republicans only barely control the House now and are set to lose them in the midterms.  If only two or three more Republicans in the House abandoned ship, Mike Smarmy Johnson is done for and the GOP would start to break free of King Donny.  Two Republican House members, including amazingly Marjorie Taylor Greene, are openly poking the king and he's been able to do nothing about it.

Yet another is that, related to above, Trump just intends to lie his way out of whatever they say, if they're damaging to him, and so far we have no reason to believe that in spite of his personally gross behavior towards women, that he's implicated in kiddy diddling.  At the worst, it's possible that he knew what was going on and didn't do anything about it,  and there's likely a lot of rich and powerful people in that boat.  Or maybe he actually didn't.  Epstein was a creep, but just having young bikini wearing women on the premises doesn't necessarily mean that diddling is going on.  So whatever is in there, he may be confident won't touch him directly, and whomever it does, well he can always say it includes Democrats too, which it probably does.

Which may be, after all is said and done, the biggest lesson.  Since Ronald Reagan this country has followed the absurd notion that's what's good for the wealthy is good for everyone.  As Oliver Bullough has stated; "All money corrupts, and big money corrupts bigly".   

Businessmen plotted to take over the government and install fascism in the 1930s.  The plot failed, and nobody was prosecuted.  Reagan sold the American public the idea that vast wealth trickles down.

Epstein hung out with the rich and powerful. Some of them he supplied with teenage girls.  The money didn't trickle down, and its not trickling down.  Rather, it's morally corrosive and effectively the Business Plot ultimately won out with the election of Donald Trump, aided by the Democrats prime strategy being a judicial coup rather than an oligarchic one.  

There's still time to reverse that. This might be a good place to start.

Protecting the diddlers with a vote.

I would remind my Republican colleagues who are deciding how to vote, Donald Trump can protect you in red districts right now by giving you an endorsement, but by 2030, he's not gonna be the president and you will have voted to protect pedophiles if you don't vote to release those files. The record of this vote will last longer than Donald Trump's presidency.

Thomas Massie. 

An East Wing Post Mortem.

 

Comparative air photos posted by CBS News. Put up under commentary and fair use exception.

I've never seen the East Wing of the White House, and of course, now, I never will.  I have very little, as in no, interest in touring Washington D.C. and  have even less interest than that now that the illegitimate Trump gang of insurrectionist is occupying the nation's capital.  

This has been a very revealing series of events however, and we can take some things away from it.

The first thing we have learned is how utterly desperate Donald Trump is to amount to something.  He started too late in life and his character is too fixed in order to achieve that, absent late in life inspiration of an existential type which would require him to make a profound change in his behavior.  Born into wealth and a playboy by character, he's desperately trying to buy and build himself into seriousness and relevance.  In the back of his mind, or frankly maybe in the forefront, he knows that he's a fart in a windstorm.  After he's out of office, and no amount of far right fantasizing is going to keep him there, his successor, right or left, will begin the process of trying to repair the damage Trump has done.  If its a right wing leader, like wannabe NatCon J. D. Vance, it'll be National Conservative far right, but less insane than Trump.  It probably won't be Vance however, but somebody from the political center, particularly if the Democrats get their act together and dump their own wackadoodle far left, which there are signs they will, or from the actual libertarian populist right.

My prediction, early though it is, is that the next President will be Tammy Duckworth, maybe on a Duckworth Klobuchar ticket.  I can see, however, Thomas Massie and Rand Paul taking a run at Vance's dreams and keeping them from happening.

Vance would keep the Trump monument to himself up and pretend to like it, as he only is where he is now due to Trump, but as soon as somebody who wasn't a Trump sycophant is in the Oval Office, it's coming down.  That will be symbolic of the entire Trump legacy, destruction that will ultimately come down, and have to be rebuilt.

Trump want to see himself as a great man, a sort of Napoleon being crowned, but knows that he's more like Napoleon on Elba.  He's not going to get there.  He's really extremely pathetic.

Also sad is the degree to which it has been demonstrated that a life of extreme wealth is corrosive.  Trump's entire life of largess already showed this, but he really does believe that the White House needs a huge overblown rushed ballroom as he's seen those of failed monarchies in Europe.  The republics, or in one case dictatorship, that inherited that stuff still uses it as it's a human instinct not to rip things down.  That's why the Brandenburg Gate, which should have been blown to rubble in 1945, is still standing.  Yes, it's a monument to German militarism, but it's big and already there so we keep it around.  That's the reason the Eiffel Tower is there, even though its a giant ugly radio tower, or why the "egg beater" thing in Casper Wyoming is still there.  We just can't bring ourselves to rip things down, no matter hideos they are, or how symbolically problematic.

The egg beater in Casper Wyoming.  It's ugly.

This will come down.

It'll come down in part as it just won't work with an 18th Century large house built on a budget.  It wasn't constructed to be a palace, but just a big house.

Which brings me to my next point.

Perhaps the West Wing, after actually going through the proper process, ought to be taken out as well.

No attachments to the structure are really consistent with its original concept.  It isn't supposed to have a lot of offices and the entire concept of the First Lady needing room for anything is absurd.  The First Lady is simply the President's wife, or Trump's case in regard to the monarchical role to which he aspires, the current concubine, or in the American Civil Religion context, his current wife. 

Maybe it ought to be just scaled back to its original footprint.

Some would object that that would mean that it wouldn't have enough room for its purpose Well, No. 10 Downing Street has less room than the White House.  And if more space is really needed, they can find it somewhere else in Washington D.C.  Nixon actually did that with the nearby Eisenhower Building.

The White House in 1846, when it was first photographed.

Restoring the White House back to scale would also be symbolic.  The entire office of the Presidency needs to be restored to scale.  Right now, Trump is in fact ruling as a dictator, with the complicitly of the Dixiecrat Party that has taken over the GOP.  That needs to end, and end to an enormous degree.

The drift towards an imperial presidency started with Theodore Roosevelt, who is a person I admire, but whom I admire more than I once did.  TR, like Trump, tended to act unilaterally, the difference being that Roosevelt was a profoundly intelligent and moral man, where as the opposite is true of Trump.  The East Wing started off in his administration as the fairly modest East Terrace, which looked nice and wasn't an overblown Sun King structure like the proposed ballroom will be, but it nonetheless got the modification trend rolling.

It would be TR's cousin Franklin that really got the modern Presidency established, however, and that due to the emergency of the Great Depression and World War Two.  Franklin Roosevelt did not rule as a dictator, although people liked to accuse him of that at the time.  Ironically, a President that the Republicans hate to this very day is the one, in some ways, that Trump has tried to emulate, even to the extent of wishing for a third term, which he cannot legally occupy.  Franklin, of course, redid the East Wing, which was done in part due to the bomb shelter that was constructed underneath  it.

The West Wing also dates back to TR's time in the White House with the construction of what was supposed to be a temporary structure.  That structure was expanded in 1909 and ultimately came to be the White House office space.  I don't doubt that they need office space, but as noted, maybe it can just be somewhere else.

And in fact, for the most part, it should be.

Taft family milk cow Pauline Wayne, one of two milk cows the Tafts kept and allowed to freely roam the White House grounds. What is now known as the Eisenhower building is in the background.  This is as things should be.