Donald Trump and the Madman of the Year

It's Time Magazine's ugliest Person of the Year cover since it awarded Adolf Hitler that dubious honour.

And Donald Trump is reported to be conflicted. On the one hand his massive all consuming ego is flattered, or inflated further. 

On the other hand he's furious that anybody should call him a "divider."

And I mean furious.



Even though he's on a Victory Thank You Tour of the states he won, but not the ones he lost. So he can brag about how great he is, and smirk as the adoring mobs chant "lock her up, lock her up."

Even though he has been appointing the most reactionary right-wing cabinet the U.S. has ever seen. 

And even though he has been going after his critics on Twitter like a man possessed, including this humble union leader at the Carrier factory in Indianapolis...





Who was attacked after he exposed Trump as a Con artist who was inflating the number of jobs he had saved. 

And is now being threatened by Trump's ugly supporters.

A half-hour after Trump tweeted about Jones on Wednesday, the union leader’s phone began to ring and kept ringing, he said. One voice asked: What kind of car do you drive? Another said: We’re coming for you.

And when you think of that, and of all the other people Trump has attacked. And how he still doesn't see himself as a Great Divider, and is outraged that anyone could think he was, I think I have to agree with Charles Blow again.

Trump isn't The Person of the Year, he's The Madman of the Year. 



Donald, thy name is division. You and your campaign of toxicity and intolerance have not only divided this country but also ripped it to tatters.

As my mother used to say: Don’t try to throw a rock and hide your hand. Own your odiousness.

He's trying to fool Americans by running two very different campaigns.

Trump is running two post-campaign campaigns: one high and one low, one of frivolity and one of enormous consequence. One is a campaign of bread and circuses — tweets, rallies, bombast about random issues of the moment, all meant to distract and excite — and the other is the constant assemblage of a cabinet full of fat cats and “mad dog” generals, a virtual aviary of vultures and hawks.

Trying to distract them from the ultra-right wing government he is putting together, one packed with generals, billionaires, right-wing crazies, religious fanatics, misogynists and bigots.

Which as Charles Blow says, would be a fatal mistake...



I feel like America is being flashed by a giant neuralyzer, à la “Men In Black.” We are in danger of forgetting what has happened and losing sight, in the fog of confusion and concealment, of the profundity of the menace taking shape right before us.

For Trump is both crazy and dangerous. And who knows to what dark place he might take his country and the world?

And the good news? Trump is already overplaying his hand. He just can't help himself.

Going after a humble union leader like Chuck Jones can only make some of his working class supporters wonder whether he really is their champion.

And when disappointment sets in, as it inevitably will, Trump's personality and all his scandals are going to make him an easy president to take down.

The Democrats are reported to be preparing to attack him, and disrupt his government like the Republicans did to Obama as soon as he was inaugurated. No holds barred.

And when The Resistance kicks into full gear and starts attacking and mocking such an easy target, by whatever high or low means necessary...




Alison Jackson

I wouldn't be surprised if next years's Time Magazine cover looks like the one they should have run this year...



Behold the Emperor with no clothes, in the full flush of his bestiality.

The Groper in Chief. His own worst enemy.

And the harbinger of his own destruction...