Rex Tillerson: Trump is a moron

Trump’s campaign is still assessing the political damage from Tuesday night’s chaotic first presidential debate. The president’s refusal to condemn white supremacists, of course, is the immediate crisis. “He blew that for sure,” a campaign adviser told me. “It’s nuts,” a former West Wing official said wearily, sounding like a storm survivor with PTSD. “Total lunacy,” said another former White House staffer, who remains close to the campaign. “Trump didn’t win over any voters, and he pissed off a lot of people,” added a prominent Republican.

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“Trump thinks he won. He didn’t,” said another Republican with ties to the campaign. “But does anyone have the balls to tell him that? No. They’d be fired.”

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“The thing about the debate is people got to see why no one that has any integrity can work for Trump. This is what Trump is like in the Oval Office every day. It’s why [John] Kelly left. It’s why [Jim] Mattis quit,” said the prominent Republican. “Trump doesn’t let anyone else speak. He really doesn’t care what you have to say. He demeans people. He talks over them. And everyone around him thinks it’s getting worse.”

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“He has to just relax and let Joe Biden speak,” said the ex-official, who remains close to the White House.

  Vanity Fair

As Joe himself said in the debate, he doesn't know how to do that.

Republicans are resigned to the fact that Trump is unlikely––or unwilling––to course-correct.

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Trump doesn’t accept the consensus that the debate was a disaster because, sources said, he was unabashedly himself.

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“For Trump the Times story was worse than losing reelection,” said the second Republican. “If you had told Donald back in 2015 that his tax returns would be exposed and he’d have all these investigations, I guarantee you he wouldn’t have run.”

As the Times story lit up cable news and Twitter, news broke that Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale had been taken into custody outside his Ft. Lauderdale home and hospitalized after threatening to commit suicide and allegedly beating his wife days prior.

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Parscale’s public meltdown happened while he is reportedly under investigation for stealing from the Trump campaign and the RNC. According to the source close to the campaign, the Trump family is worried that Parscale could turn on them and cooperate with law enforcement about possible campaign finance violations.

His lawyer will be contacted to give him the message that if he just keeps quiet, Trump will pardon him.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." -- H.L. Mencken

h/t Stephen

And I thought we'd reached that point with Dubya.  Actually, I still think that.  But Dubya had evil geniuses on his team, not evil morons, and the entire Republican party apparatus wasn't yet rotten to the core.