Odds and ends of Donald Trump insanity | Tom Camfield

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MEANWHILE, that was just a passing little bit that caught my eye Monday. Later in the day came the familiar old TV image we’ve had of Trump in front of a microphone . . . giving his endless string of meaningless misrepresentations and lying fakery where pandemic statistics and honest elections are concerned. Hearing nothing new after a while, I just flipped him off. I’ll check the real news in The Seattle Times in the morning.

Or maybe check HuffPost on the internet, where Josephine Harvey Monday evening noted: “President Donald Trump got history wrong on multiple counts Monday when he claimed that the ‘1917’ Spanish flu pandemic likely led to the end of World War II ― which began more than two decades later. ‘The closest thing is in 1917, they say, the great pandemic. It certainly was a terrible thing where they lost anywhere from 50 to 100 million people,’ Trump said during his White House press briefing. ‘Probably ended the Second World War, all the soldiers were sick.’

“Leading up to that comment, Trump had been praising his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 160,000 people in the U.S., claiming without evidence that without his ban on foreign travelers, millions more would be dead. Trump has incorrectly referred to the year of the 1918 pandemic dozens of times, even though his own grandfather Frederick Trump died of it in New York City in 1918.”

The typical Tweet response here seems to have been, “The President of the United States of America is the stupidest man in the world.” https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/trump-1917-flu-pandemic-031411879.html

And does Donald stall about reality? During his presidential campaign in 2016, he promised the public he’d release his income tax returns as soon as they were “worked on.” Now, after four-plus years it’s “U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday insisted that a grand jury subpoena for his tax returns was overly broad and issued in bad faith and that as president he deserves extra protection from what he called harassment by Manhattan's district attorney.” I’m guessing another election will have come and gone without our having learned anything in this regard.

HOWEVER, if a troll is looking for a bit of meat upon which to chew, here is the most serious matter of all: Trump’s utter destruction of the U.S. Postal Service for his own convenience . . . personal ends, his re-election, justifying any conceivable means, however destructive.

Luke O’Brien noted in HuffPost 0n Tuesday (Aug. 11)
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night can slow the mail. But President Donald Trump can.

“Late Friday, Trump’s handpicked new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, announced sweeping organizational changes that promise to further undercut the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to perform a vital democratic function: the timely delivery of mail-in ballots. This comes during an election when as many as 80 million Americans are expected to vote by mail because of the risk of contracting COVID-19.

DeJoy, a major Republican fundraiser and Trump donor, reassigned or sidelined almost two dozen high-ranking USPS officials in a move to centralize his control of the agency, also instituting a hiring freeze and voluntary early retirements.

“Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), chair of the House subcommittee responsible for oversight of the Postal Service, called the reorganization 'deliberate sabotage' and an obvious attempt to interfere in the election . . .

“Now trailing Biden in the polls, Trump has apparently decided to tamper with the federal machinery overseeing aspects of the election — including the delivery of mail-in ballots. He is again claiming the contest will be rigged, asserting repeatedly and despite all evidence to the contrary that mail-in ballots are ripe for abuse. He has called mail-in voting ‘fraudulent’ and ‘corrupt’ and even suggested it might be a reason to postpone the election . . .”

Read considerably more at:
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/donald-trump-us-postal-service-democracy-100418879.html
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/donald-trump-rig-2020-election-160315879.html