These are not the actions of a well-adjusted person. Trump clearly has a maudlin fetish for cruelty – given his pattern of humiliating both friend and foe, the president's brain is occupied with little else than Electoral College results and revenge fantasies. Trump is basically a 71-year old kid cackling in delight as he melts ants under his magnifying glass. Only these ants are attorneys general, senators, FBI directors and governors.

Naturally, Trump's supporters think toying with peoples' dignity is a show of strength – but it is the exact opposite. He's a weak leader who wastes what little political capital he has settling personal scores. With apologies to Winston Churchill, Trump remains an immodest man with much to be modest about.

And it's just a matter of time before he's under Vladimir Putin's magnifying glass.

More here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/08/05/trump-has-fetish-cruelty-christian-schneider-column/537483001/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories

For years, President Donald Trump has said it’s clear that he is “a very smart guy” since he attended Wharton — a school he describes as “super genius stuff.”

Trump, who graduated from Wharton in 1968, has also never challenged the fact that he "graduated first in his class," which various publishers and news agencies such as The New York Times have reported.

Penn records and Trump’s classmates dispute this claim.

In 1968, The Daily Pennsylvanian published a list of the 56 students who were on the Wharton Dean’s List that year — Trump’s name is not among them.

(Trump's) use of "enemies of the people" raises unavoidable echoes of some of history's most murderous dictators.

Under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, out-of-favour artists and politicians were designated enemies and many were sent to hard labour camps or killed. Others were stigmatised and denied access to education and employment.

And Chairman Mao, the leader of China who presided over the deaths of millions of people in a famine brought about by his Great Leap Forward, was also known to use the phrase against anyone who opposed him, with terrible consequences.

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Gabriel Sherman, national affairs editor at New York magazine, called the phrase a "chilling" example of "full-on dictator speak".

President Trump expanded the number of top advisers in the White House and raised their wages compared with his predecessor, President Obama, according to White House officials and government records.

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White House aides who earn nearly $180,000 – more than the basic salary paid most House and Senate lawmakers – include Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Counselor Kellyanne Conway, Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor Stephen Bannon, and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

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The president, whose staff structure is notable for competing power centers and opaque lines of authority, named at least 27 “assistants to the president,” according to a White House spokeswoman. After verifying a staff list with a Trump deputy, RealClearPolitics counted 28 senior advisers. Despite repeated questions over several weeks, White House aides did not iron out the discrepancy as of Thursday.

By law, the nation’s chief executive can appoint 25 senior advisers at the top federal pay scale set annually in the White House Office.

President Donald Trump blasted department store chain Nordstrom Inc (JWN.N) on Wednesday for dropping his daughter Ivanka's clothing line, prompting critics to accuse him of misusing public office to benefit his family's sprawling business empire.

After Trump's highly unusual move to use a White House platform to intervene in a commercial matter involving his daughter, Nordstrom reiterated that its action last week was based on declining sales of the Ivanka Trump products. But White House spokesman Sean Spicer characterized the move as a "direct attack" on the president's policies.

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"This is misuse of public office for private gains," Richard Painter, who served as Republican President George W. Bush's chief ethics lawyer, said in an email to Reuters. "And it is abuse of power because the official message is clear - Nordstrom is persona non grata with the administration."

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Bush ethics lawyer Painter, who has been critical of Trump in the past, said Nordstrom could have cause for legal action if the Trump administration takes any adverse action against it.

After Donald Trump took the oath of office, he was given the codes that allow him to order the launch of nuclear weapons.

At that point, Trump inherited a deeply flawed system: one that gives sole and absolute authority to the president to launch U.S. nuclear weapons - and puts extreme time pressure on him to make that decision.


During the presidential campaign, the public seemed shocked to learn that the U.S. president has the authority to decide - on his or her own, for whatever reason - to launch nuclear weapons, and that no one has the authority to veto that decision. There are military and political experts in advisory roles, but the final authority rests just with the president.

It's time to change that policy. The reasons behind it are now outdated.

Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, subscribes to (a) phallocentric worldview. To him, women are sexual objects coded for, in Mulvey’s words, “strong visual and erotic impact.” None are spared. As an overseer of beauty pageants, he subjected contestants to a humiliating vetting process dubbed “The Trump Rule”; as a father, he frequently objectified his eldest daughter, Ivanka, and once speculated about the breast size of his other daughter, Tiffany, when she was a mere infant. If, God forbid, women disrupt his gaze by assuming a role other than passive object, Trump lashes out. When Hillary Clinton took a bathroom break during a Democratic debate, he called it “too disgusting” to mention; when a female lawyer requested to pause his 2011 deposition because she needed to pump breast milk, Trump reportedly turned red in the face, got up out of his chair, screamed, “You’re disgusting!” and ran out of the room.

This churlish, troglodytic behavior is said to have followed him all the way to the White House. According to an Axios report, Trump demanded that the women who worked for him during the campaign “dress like women,” and after Melissa McCarthy skewered his press secretary Sean Spicer in a popular Saturday Night Live sketch, the president allegedly recoiled in horror.
“More than being lampooned as a press secretary who makes up facts, it was Spicer’s portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the president’s eyes, according to sources close to him,” reported Politico, which added that the “unflattering send-up by a female comedian” did not bode well for Spicer’s “longevity in the grueling, high-profile job.”


News that a gender-swapped parody constituted the ultimate insult to Trump prompted comedy fans to reach out to Rosie O’Donnell, the former reality-show host’s archnemesis, about portraying either President Trump or his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, on SNL.


“I am here to serve,” tweeted Rosie. “I would need a few days to prepare—so if called—I will be ready.”
That, naturally, piqued the public’s interest even more.