How some old Trump drawings could lead to Vance becoming the 48th president, by Hal M. Brown

 

“I never wrote a picture in my life,” he said in a rebuttal to the accusations made in The Wall Street Journal as he vehemently denied having anything to do with the Epstein birthday card. I won’t delve into the syntax of this sentence suggesting cognitive decline since this is so obvious.

In fact, Trump does “write” pictures. Some of them have been sold at auction. The signed sketch shown below sold in 2017 for $16,000, according to The New York Times.

One has to assume that those sold at auction had their provenance verified. If this is a basis of Trump’s defense it is weak sauce. If it is all he has, he ain’t got bupkis.

He can’t say he never knew Epstein. He could try to say that it’s impossible to find an unbiased jury since I expect we will see pictures like the one below not just in the UK but all over the place (read article): 

Trump may hope that Rupurt Murdoch settles, folding like others have, trembling at the thought of being taken to court by the Mighty Donald Trump. He very well be underestimating the man that built a media empire and is now worth around $20 billion. Trump is worth about $5 billion. 

I have a feeling Murdoch relishes going up against Trump in court. I think the first order of business for him would be to do everything possible to assure the trial was televised. If he could do this he’d fire any Fox News personalities who tried to take Trump’s side and the trial would have wall to wall coverage on Fox News.

We should remember that Trump got his start with a major leg up from his father. He got $413M from his dad, much from tax dodges (article). Murdoch got his start when he inherited a small newspaper, The News, in 1952 following his father’s death.

Murdoch rightfully can claim that if any one person can claim that they greased the wheels of Trump’s ascendence to the presidency it is Rupurt Murdoch. Nobody can say that without Fox News Trump wouldn’t have been elected twice but their influence can’t be underestimated. If Murdoch cares about how history views him once he’s gone, he may want to be depicted as someone who meant well in supporting Trump, but eventually realized he created a monster and decided to bring him down. He could use this trial to begin the unraveling of Trump’s aura of invincibility.

This could lead to J.D. Vance deciding the time was finally ripe for initiating the 25th Amendment due to Trump’s impossible to plausibly deny dementia.

Vance has every motivation to do this since if successful he would become president. He needs a majority of the Cabinet to turn on Trump and vote to send this to Congress. This is where Vance has leverage. If he became president he could replace any Cabinet member. He could promise to keep enough of them so he’d get the votes he needed. You can bet he will be following national polls carefully.

Then there’s the most difficult part. A two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate is required to remove a president under the 25th Amendment. Assuming all the Democrats voted for removal obviously enough Republicans would have to look to their own futures to gauge the sentiment of the voters. 

Here’s where Elon Musk comes in. If he backs the removal of Trump he can pour massive amounts of money into any candidate’s campaign who will run against a Trump supporting member of Congress. 

J.D. Vance could become the 48th President of the United States.

Trump has normalized a president wearing a red baseball cap. If Vance really want to stick it to Trump he could wear a hat like the one below once he became president.

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When will it be time for Vance to invoke the 25th Amendment to begin the process of pulling Trump's driver's license? By Hal M. Brown

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The RawStory article title is 'Yikes': Ex-Tea Party lawmaker sounds alarm on 'cover-up' of 'Trump's cognition. The lawmaker it’s about is Joe Walsh.

Here’s the excerpt that made me think of my grandfather’s cognitive decline:

"As all of this is playing out, Trump’s health and cognitive fitness are in the spotlight again. White Housephysicians report that he is suffering from chronic venous insufficiency, which has resulted in his unsightly ankle swelling," Walsh wrote Friday. "Not a terribly shocking development for an obese 79-year-old man."

However, he said, "A bigger concern is his cognitive decline."

Drawing attention to a previous allegation Walsh himself made, he added Friday, "As you know, I’ve said there’s a cover-up going on in the White House with respect to Trump’s cognition."

"There was more proof of his decline this week, as Trump publicly questioned why Joe Biden hired Fed Chair Jerome Powell—even though he appointed Powell during his first term. Yikes," Walsh wrote.

My maternal grandfather lived with us all of my life until I went off to college. My parents moved into his and my grandmother’s house when they got married and my family continued to live there. My grandmother died when I was four and I ended up moving into their room which had two full-sized beds. 

My grandfather was a kind man. He was self-effacing, easy going, and rather passive. Prior to retiring he was a salesman in the families men’s clothing store.

His one passion aside from doting on my younger sister and me was dancing at the Y’s senior canteen where he was something of a ladies man.

Aside from liking the ladies after his wife died, he was absolutely nothing like Trump. 

In many ways my grandfather was a surrogate father since my own father worked 6 ½ days a week, left for work before I woke up and came home just in time for a 6 PM dinner. After eating he was too tired to do much more than fall asleep in front of the TV.

My father never got a driver’s license. He took the bus to work. Thinking back, I wonder if he had some kind of phobia about driving.

My grandfather and mother were the drivers in the family and my grandfather sometimes chauffeured my father around on various errands. 

By the time my grandfather began to succumb to dementia I’d already gone off to college but heard the following story which relates to Trump from my mother.

He was driving my father someplace and turned onto a oneway street going in the wrong direction. He drove for a short distance without encountering any other cars but then several cars approached and had to pull around him to avoid a collision. They were honking their horns and gesturing frantically at him.

His reaction was to happily say to my father “they know me, they know me.”

My father got him to pull over and turn around. When they arrived home he told my mother about it. They decided it was time to pull his driver’s license.

Some years later, after my mother died, he moved to Miami, Florida where other relatives had retired and he lived happily into his late eighties.

I assume you figured out the point of this story since it is my title.

When will it be time for Vance to invoke the 25th Amendment and for the process of pulling Trump’s driver’s license to begin so the elderly demented president can retire? Trump can then live out his life in Florida where he can play with his little putter and have people treat him like royalty.

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If Donnie Despot wants to make America beautiful from sea to shining sea he should watch Escape from New York and reopen the real Alcatraz, by Hal M. Brown

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This is in the news this morning:

The consensus among experts is that it would cost so much to convert Alcatraz back to a prison that it doesn’t make sense to do this despite Trump’s bellicose bloviating. He had his Big Beautiful Bill. Now he can have a “Make America Beautiful From Sea To Shining Sea Bill” by opening a Pacific Ocean Alcatraz prison.

There is a cost effective way to accomplish this. 

“Escape from New York” is a pretty good movie. I’ve watched it a couple of times.

It stars Kurt Russell as imprisaoned criminal Snake Plissken (great name) who is offered a chance to be set free if he can rescue the president who has crash landed in an Air Force One escape pod on Manhattan Island. Here’s his fictional bio.

In the movie, Manhattan Island had been converted to a prison for the most dangerous criminals. Once there the inmates are left to fend for themselves without guards. Food and water are dropped in from helicopters. Escape from the island prison is prevented by heavy law enforcement patrols with orders to shoot anyone who attempts to get off the island since it would otherwise be easy to escape. Manhattan is hardly a perilous swim from the mainland like Alcatraz.

“Escape” is a riveting and totally implausible yarn. Russell is perfect in the role of the one eyed Snake Plissken:

Alcatraz Island is approximately 22 acres in size. It is about 1.25 miles offshore from San Francisco in San Francisco Bay. I live in a continuing care retirement community which is on a little more than 22 acres and I used to live on a cranberry bog that size which we owned. It was my backyard, so I have a sense for how big this is. If you can’t conceptualize how large an area this is, you’ll have to take my word for it that this would be large enough to accommodate far more than the 700 some prisoners currently held at Alligator Alcatraz as long as nobody cared about creature comforts. 

“At any given time, Alcatraz held around 330 prisoners, with each inmate given their own cell - an unusual luxury compared to the overcrowded conditions of most American prisons at the time.” Reference with photos.

Ironically, the original Alcatraz wasn’t the worst prison to be incarcerated in.

Alcatraz already has buildings, albeit in lousy condition needing very expensive repairs to make them decent to live in. There is also an open section where tents could be set up like those in Alligator Alcatraz.

I can see several thousand inmates being held there in a cost effective way as long as nobody cared about their establishing a brutal kill or be killed hierarchy where inmates ran the prison themselves like they did in “Escape from New York.”

Trump and his heartless henchmen (and henchwomen) not only don’t care about the conditions their prisoners are held in, and brush off humanitarian concerns, they seem to revel in being able to inflict pain upon them.

There you have it, Trump. All for free from me. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.

Recent:

Could Trump be satisfied as the god of golf?

Trump is addicted to power. He relishes playing the role of president of the world’s most powerful nation. He salivates at the mere thought of having world leaders kowtow to him. 

For him, the words “mister president” coming from reporters, many who he knows despise him, when he sits on his golden chair in his gilded Oval Office, are music to his ears. As I finish this Substack, he is on TV in a press conference with the president of Bahrain:

I can only wonder what the president of Bahrain is feeling and thinking as Trump brags about himself and attacks and insults Presdient Biden since he is literally twiddling his thumbs:

Trump knows his is secure in his position. He doesn’t experience a nanosecond of self-doubt, let alone a momentary thought that his presidency could be in jeopardy.

Even if the conservative Supreme Court justices all had visits from the spirits of Christmas past, present, and yet to come, and as a result they decided they'd gone too far in granting Trump the powers of a king and tried to reverse any of their enabling decisions, it wouldn't matter.

Trump would ignore their rulings. As far as he’s concerned the MAGA crown is inextricably fused to his head.

If the Democrats won back control of Congress Trump would bat a wrinkled eyelid. If laws were passed which went against him they wouldn’t be worth the paper they were printed on since he’d ignroe them.

There are only two American institutions that can stop Trump's juggernaut to cement his absolute power. 

One is the military and the other is a critical mass of the population. 

Joined together, the truly patriotic military which incudes officers who graduated from military academies which had honor codes, and at least 50% of the population who were willing to take to the streets, could become a credible force to return us to democracy.

There are several ways this could play out. If it came to potential confrontations which could result in the loss of many lives this could give Trump pause. The crucial question might end up being whether Trump want to be the president of a country engaged in a second civil war.

We can look at 1930's Germany to see what Hitler had that Trump doesn't. He had the support of the vast majority of the people and of the military.

Trump would not go silently into a golden retirement. He would kick and scream until he was confronted with the real possiblity he’d be forced out of office. 

Everyone has a psychological breaking point, even someone like Trump. If this approaches he will be at his most dangerous. Credible reports of Hitler’s last days describe him as wanting to punish the German people and military for failing to achieve his goals. 

Trump has amazing defense mechanisms to shield himself from anxiety. He could see the handwriting on the wall not for his regime but for him personally.

He could envision an escape which he could convince himself does not represent defeat. He’d frame it in a convoluted way as a victory.

If Trump knew that there was a line he could not cross before the military would stand against him, and the people would risk their lives to protest in the streets, spending his final days playing golf with people who still worshipped him and flying on his new 747 might look really attractive. He could create for himself the illusion/delusion of godlike power.

If Trump does go into the night, he will not go quietly. He’d never say anything as profound as Macbeth did about the meaninglessness of life: "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," but he may feel that clinging to power just isn’t worth it when he’s just turned 80 and he looks to the limited time he has left.

Maybe a life of golf, glamor, and glitz will look like the most attractive alternative.

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