Trump is losing control. The signs are evident.

[Baitball Blogger]

His decision-making has reached the point where the only way to save face is to admit he has Dementia.

1) He's going to make a speech on Thursday to claim that Warnock and Ossoff are illegimate because their elections were fraudulent.

2) He also is floating the idea that we, the US, are going to start charging 20% for passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

And this is after he tried to get more than a billion dollars from the IRS and immunity from tax audits for him and his family members. (Which was shot down by a judge.)

I just listened to his voice as he was talking about the charge for passage through the Strait. It was weak and doddering.

It's time for the Republicans to step in and, at least get some qualified handlers in the Oval Office, because we are way past describing the craziness as a rabbit hole.

[Prairie Gates]

1. I'd really love to see the auspices and the mechanism whereby a shipping company pays 20%

of the value of its cargo to the United States government for passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Like, seriously, I want the New York Times to fully break down how that would work - and I mean literally how it would function at the microlevel. I agree that this rambling nonsense shows Trump at his most deluded. The real scandal is that people are just happily reporting on his nonsense.

So, I have a ship on the wrong side of the Strait. I want to move it through. Who do I pay? How? How is the value of my cargo being determined? If the US government is taking payment, to what account? Who is keeping track of these payments, and where they're coming from, and when, and where the money is going? How can a citizen access this information? How can a news organization? How can a member of Congress? What is the status of these monies?

Of course, everyone knows that this statement will simply go away after a few days, so it's meaningless and none of these questions even have to be answered. It's just the usual Trump pile of bullshit. There will be some new "ceasefire" or "return to the MOU" in a week or two and everybody will have forgotten that Trump pledged to collect a 20% protection money fee from ships. The whole thing is completely off the rails, and surely Republican members of Congress understand that?

[usedtobedemgurl]

15. Dummy never does his own work.

My guess is he will look at how Iran has collected their tolls and do it that way. It has worked for Iran. But I think Iran would not let the US do this. They have a tight grip on the strait. It is power for Iran. It can bring us to our knees if all oil and other things were to be cut off.

It isn't a theory that tolls can be collected. Iran has done it.

[Prairie Gates]

16. I want to know the mechanism whereby OUR government would do it

That is very much "theory," or at least unexplained.

[Prairie Gates]

21. *****I SAID the 20% FEE WOULD BE GONE IN A COUPLE OF DAYS *****

It actually only took one day:

https://democraticunderground.com/100221375544

Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States.

Clown. CLOWN.

[NoMoreRepugs]

2. Crapping in his pants all these years has infected every part of his decrepit meatsack.

[hamsterjill]

3. If it hasn't happened by now, what makes you think it will ever happen?

"It's time for the Republicans to step in and, at least get some qualified handlers in the Oval Office, because we are way past describing the craziness as a rabbit hole."

Republicans aren't interested in stopping the crazy. They seem quite comfortable to watch it all burn.

[calimary]

5. Probably because they see so many Americans focusing on the crazy.

It’s a perfect distraction from the piss-poor job they’re doing in governing. Even their “leader” is losing it.

You don’t reach 80 while keeping a fully-operational brain-of-a-20-year-old in your head. Nope. If you’re 80, SO IS YOUR BRAIN.

[biocube]

13. 12 years old in maturity, 80 in terms of aging

NM.

[Captain Zero]

14. Uh 20 yr old brains are not fully operational

More like 26-28.

[Baitball Blogger]

9. It just occurred to me that.among the

Republicans in Congress and the Senate, there isn’t one of them that reminds me of Republicans in the past. It’s like the party has willfully evolved into a party of lackeys.

[dalton99a]

4. Republicans don't care.

[Skittles]

6. republicans are NEVER going to "step in"

because they serve Trump, NOT America

[LuvLoogie]

7. Rubio and Miller are steering things

Hegseth and Blanche are too fucking dense to initiate anything with any vision. The sociopathic tech bros are letting Rubio's closeted megalomania have a play at geopolitics, while Miller gets to ethnically purge the U.S.

White supremacists with nukes.

[C Moon]

8. I think he's going to apologize for everything he's done, and resign.

[Baitball Blogger]

10. I give you credit for holding onto your sense of humor.

[Vinca]

11. I think the sky is going to rain money and we'll all be billionaires.

[LisaL]

12. If everybody is a billionaire,

a gallon of milk will cost one billion, and we will all be poor again despite being billionaires.

[Johonny]

17. Trump is clinically insane. He is not fit for office.

No one ripped a 300 foot gash in the reflecting pool. No one stole the 2020 election. He is not charging 20 percent on goods moving through the straight. He has lost complete control of his ICE agents, who are engaged in criminal activity, his economy isn't the hottest in the world, nor is it even better than Joe Bidens, we are hopelessly locked in a war with Iran he started for no reason and he has no goal. We could continue forever.

[Baitball Blogger]

19. The reasons keep piling on.

History is going to look back and, in retrospect, wonder how the hell we missed the signs?

Our weak excuse: Time is linear.

[kentuck]

18. I think you are right. He is losing control.

Iran has been a real reality check for him.

He changes his stories from day to day. He has become a desperate man. He sees himself losing the next election unless he can find a way to steal it or smear the other Party so badly that people do not show up to vote. Those have become his only options.

[thought crime]

20. He has reverted to the kind of behavior we saw between the 2020 election day and Jan 6.

Apparently they forgot to create a Plan 2026. He's winging it, and losing control as errors catch up with him.