I mourn the absence of a laugh track when the demented, one-trick-pony GOP version of Professor Harold Hill waddles onto the stage and slurs out his latest Sir Story or some other, similarly b.s.-fueled inanity ramble. Jayzus, what a pathetic loon. His grifter-grafter investors? Scum, much like him. As for his supporters, they'd let you die horribly if it was the price for Hugo Boss to tailor them up a nice Brownshirt brown shirt. Exhausting? Sure. But scarier than hell beats exhausting, every time.

#5
Never said Trump is a Nazi. Nazis actually have an ideology. Trump has none. What plenty of his followers do display, though, is Brownshirt thug mentality. That's the point.

Oh, almost forgot: he's also an ignorant slob. A real piece of werk.

Much worse from his own perspective than exhausting, Trump has become boring.

As a kid, I spent some summers traveling with a circus. It was the real deal: three rings under a Big Top erected by roustabouts and elephants, cat man, liberty act, wirewalkers, clowns, a hippotomus, a masterful Odie Dodie on hand to catch the marks on the way out. Anyway, my point: If you're running a circus you have to change things around. Regularly. One year you travel north, the next more southern, every third year maybe drop into Canada, rinse, repeat. As for the acts, the performers worked on them all the time, introducing new twists and turns.

Trump? He's so incurious, so incapable of reading the room, and so goddamn lazy that he's succeeded in becoming a noontime rerun of a black-and-white soap opera from 1953.

TWINPAC

You really nailed it at #41. It's a source of amazement that nobody, so far as we know, has sidled up to the guy, touched his arm, leaned over and whispered something beyond sweet nothings into his ear. The act has grown as old and threadbare as a Liberace tribute act in a coal-dark, smoke-infused, off-the-Strip lounge with a thinning carpet smelling more than slightly of vomit.

I attribute this state of affairs to a loon narcissist's "natural" tendency to surround himself with folks who'll grovel like voles to stay in his good graces. In other words, weak people. (Which helps account for why they tend to be both stupid and mean.). Trump's actual feedback loop is confined to news about him and how news which others might not see as related to him relates to him.

As for Putin, he must still be pinching himself at what a patsy this American is and how badly he got so thoroughly slapped around in Helsinki.

Well, as Mr. Rumsfeld observed, "You don't go to war with ... ." Or, in a similar vein, as Mr. Putin reports, "Not possible, make Vodka Lemon Cocktail no without big, fat, juicy lemon. Ha, ha, ha."

Smith has a solid case. However ... Jury selection ought to be a blast.