The guys with the guns

 What do you call the sensation of being shocked but not surprised?

Today's installment of "How bad is Trump?" begins not on the golden escalator but in the Kremlin where, according to documents obtained by the Guardian, Putin personally kicked off his campaign in order to cause "social turmoil" in the US.  A Russian psychologist astutely described Trump as an "impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex," omitting only "priapic, lazy and dumb as a rock."  Since nothing just leaks from Russia, we must assume that Putin has tired of his puppet and no longer considers him a useful idiot, which explains the hints about kompromat to come.   The view is different from under the bus, eh, Donnie?

We know General Mark Milley is a student of history as well as a proponent of teaching it (up yours, Tucker Carlson).  On January 6 he was in no doubt about what he saw, according to Leonnig and Rucker:  "Milley told his staff that he believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military."  A week after the attack he told aides, "These people are Nazis, they're boogaloo boys, they're Proud Boys.  These are the same people we fought in World War II...They may try but they're not going to fucking succeed.  You can't do this without the military.  You can't do this without the CIA and the FBI.  We're the guys with the guns."  Well, some of the guns.  Several hundred million are already in the hands of "law-abiding gun owners."  One day we may find out whose guns are bigger.  I Alone Can Fix It will be published on July 20, the seventy-seventh anniversary of the Stauffenberg bomb plot.  I'm sure the general knows that.

Trump does not like the new Germany.  The book also quotes him calling Angela Merkel "that bitch" and lying about the German crime rate under her leadership.  Nothing new here -- he hates/fears all powerful women and used to call cities with Democratic mayors "crime infested hellholes" based on fantasy.  Apparently he also hates all Germans, or as he calls them, "fucking krauts."  Apart from Hitler he admires only Fred Trump, "the biggest kraut of them all," arrested in 1927 during a KKK riot in Queens.  Putin chose well.

Fred would not have been happy last summer when his pride and joy hid from some Black people instead of brawling with them.  Everyone knows how Black Lives Matter protesters marched to the White House after the murder of George Floyd, and how in spite of armed guards, high fences and bulletproof glass, the Trumps decided it was time for a snap inspection of their bunker.  There was no way that delicious story wouldn't come out, and by morning #BunkerBaby was, as they say, trending.  According to Michael Bender the baby went projectile-shits.  "Whoever did that, they should be charged with treason!   They should be executed!" he screamed, making Bruno Ganz in Downfall look like Mr. Rogers.  It is wrong that I hope there's video?  Bender says this tantrum lasted for weeks.

The last year has been hard on Trump's inferiority complex as measured by his increasing paranoia and megalomania.  Everyone lets him down.  He had to take time out from golf and schmoozing to smear General Milley, who -- let's see, it's a little hard to follow -- only got his job because James Mattis,  "the world's most overrated general, had no respect for him...would not recommend him."  (Mattis was Defense Secretary at that point because Trump keeps appointing "the best people" who turn out to be disloyal, incompetent and regretful about their complicity with him.)  He had to waste more time whining to Michael Wolff about the Supreme Court and their collective lack of "courage" in overturning the election.   He's really the most disappointed by Brett Kavanaugh who, in Trump's telling, was practically giving legal advice to the other residents of Skid Row when Trump plucked him out of the gutter and deposited him on the Court.  (He was a federal judge.)  "I alone saved him...at great expense to myself."  Sure, Bunker Baby, now what were those five words the nice doctor asked you to memorize?  

Now Putin has let him down, too.  So sad.  Fortunately --

WHAT'S THIS?  Et tu, Mike?  It looks like the Sioux Falls Cyber Symposium and Krazy Kars Rally will take place as scheduled on August 10, 11 and 12, but the Restoration on the thirteenth -- not so much.  So said Mike Lindell on Drive Time with Steve Bannon yesterday.  "God gave me a big platform and that platform is just being used to bring out the truth," he added, but he didn't say when.  (Lousy Supreme Court probably told him not to drag his "packets" into their house.)  

Putsch comes to shove:  I can't leave without one more quote from Leonnig and Rucker, from a phone conversation Liz Cheney had with General Milley on January 7:  "That fucking guy Jim Jordan.  That son of a bitch...While these maniacs are going through the place, I'm standing in the aisle and he said, 'We need to get the ladies away from the aisle.  Let me help you.'  I smacked his hand away and told him, 'Get away from me.  You fucking did this.'" 

She'd still be conference chair if she'd just smile more.