Over time, Trump parlayed a bankrupt real estate empire into a billion dollar brand, turning himself into a latter-day PT Barnum. A sucker is born every minute, but put an asterisk next to Trump's name: he could not have been elected president but for Facebook and Moscow Center. That's a separate story.
Last week, the House Republican Intelligence Committee released its investigation of allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and found none. As political observer Seth Abramson illustrates in this damning thread on Twitter, summarizing the House minority report and concluding the opposite; there is enough in the public record now to bring impeachment charges against Trump.
Because impeachment charges will not happen until control of Congress reverts to the Democrats, the most bizarre phase of US presidential history (Queens NYC version of Beverly Hillbillies meets Dallas mashed up with Homeland) will equally condemn a morally bankrupt Republican Party and Trump.
While the White House Correspondents Dinner was ridiculing the aberrant behavior, Trump made a campaign stop in Michigan where he threw out the script again, engaging the crowd in full-throated performance art in which he conjured Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi ingenue who painted the Third Reich in video for the world to see, and Josef Goebbels, Hitler's master of propaganda. He belittled his enemies (all Democrats and all journalists except Rupert Murdoch's stable at Fox), he ridiculed conspiracy theories about Russia collusion (without noting his rise to political visibility was entirely dependent on conspiracy theories), and he personalized the persecution against him and his audience.
Working in this White House must be an absolute nightmare because Trump is an unguided missile. The only certainty: that Trump will wake up, watch Fox & Friends, take whatever medication he is on, then tweet and frame the rest of his day around whatever fuels his instinct for self-preservation. Everyone else is there in court, on pins and needles, to cater the instant demands of a mad king.
Fortunately the madness reigning the White House and among Congressional Republicans is not contagious. American voters have a chance to put a corrective fix in place this November -- and in special elections leading to November. A blue wave is coming.
