Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 16, 2017

Donald Trump couple months (or maybe weeks) from now:

“The Saturday night massacre,” have you heard of that? I invented that.

Know a lot of people besides me having serious problems with our PTSD, since last November. Trump reminds we ‘Nam vets of where the term “fragging” came from, and incompetent “leadership” that could get us killed. Now it’s the whole planet at risk, as well as everything every American soldier since 1776 fought for.

“PTSD” shouldn’t mean “President Trump = Suicidal Depression”, but I fear that, for all too many people, it does.

They are busy regretting.

> Though to assassinate a president is a bad presedent [sic] here and yet…he is a tremendous danger and the Republicans who dominate seem reluctant to impeach him or declare him "unfit"and remove him under the 25th Amendment.

They should be reluctant! Tossing out a voted-in President is a very serious matter! That’s how coups start. You prefer they go at it half-cocked like when they impeached Clinton? (Nothing came of it, in case you forget or didn’t understand.) The guy’s only been in office 6 months. That’s not even as long as it took to get rid of Nixon after the Watergate thing started, and he resigned before they could impeach him.

The best way to get rid of DJT quickly is probably to make it so un-fun for him that he resigns to go back to the life he had before.

And all 3 of your scenarios would leave us with President Pence. And he could then appoint anyone he wanted to be his VP. I’m not at all sure that would be an improvement. Are you?

Those who say one can’t diagnose the Rump without personally meeting him have not been paying attention.

Excellent!!!

People—you are talking about murder! And chatting casually about whether a murder will make you feel better! This is NOT fun stuff. I remember the murders of JFK and RFK and MLK and Malcolm and the attempted murder of George Wallace. And the attempted murder of Gabby Giffords. And the attempted murder of Steve Scalise. And yet you folks chat about it as if about the weather. Look at yourself. Look into yourself. If you can discuss murder and attempted murder as casually you can discuss whether we need rain, then YOU, and not the government, or politics, or any given individual, but YOU—YOU are the problem.

The hardest thing about trump is waiting out the mess. Too many republicans in power to do anything, as none of them seem to realize they are on the wrong side of history, per usual. Everyday we learn another bizarre situation with trump and his family and his campaign. More scandals happen within hours than happened during the entire 2 terms with Obama. They searched as hard as they could to get Clinton and came up with a blow job to impeach him. Did they need the Supreme Court to solve that one? It could have been taken care of on the People’s Court. Meanwhile, with trump, just a little garden variety treason, nothing to see here…

Things are gonna go down for decades, started with Reagan and accelerated with W. People want everything NOW! And that is not gonna happen anymore. We are living in Interesting Times, and I think they will remain interesting for a long time.

Whereas Trump appears to be insane.

The current line of succession: Pence, Paul Ryan, Orrin Hatch, Rex Tillerson, Steven Mnuchin, James Mattis. Smile.

The GOP needs to get a grip in so many ways. We even saw someone suggest that we Democrats and others who oppose Republicans are murderers due to the fact that we disagree with Republicans. Yes, we all know that a person shot Steve Scalise and that he had a political agenda. It is too bad that it happened. It does not mean that the GOP now has the right to say that all Democrats or others who disagree with them are murderers. That is not the way it works. The Left had many fallen heroes in the past. We grieved all of those people. It did not mean that the GOP had to stop being an opposing party due to the fact many of our various heroes were killed.

It seems fitting that Trump would want to be in bed with Putin, knowing his history, though I would not, so far, accuse even Trump of the same tactics as Putin. Though it should give one pause that the POTUS would elect to be in bed with Putin! It has been discussed at great length since the Don Jr. story began, that the meeting was almost certainly due to something called the Magnitsky Act. The Magnitsky Act was named after a Russian lawyer who died in a Moscow prison in 2009 after accusing Russian officials of tax fraud. Putin is not a fan of it, to say the least. Congress decided to punish Russian human rights abusers by banning them from the US. The bill was signed by a large majority and was signed by then President Obama.

Meanwhile, Jared Kushner tried and was refused a $500 million bail out from Qatar recently. Influence peddling, anyone? The Trumps go on and on with their bizarre nonsense. The folks who elected the Trumps as blue collar billionaires will soon find out which side they are on. The health care law will be voted on soon and the tax “reform” bill will be coming up soon. There were so many sordid stories connected with the Trump family even before Trump was elected, it is amazing. I was unaware until recently about the sordid details of Charles Kushner, father of Jared. Google Charles Kushner, if you are interested. After I learned about the Kushner scandal, I realized that in the end, Chris Christie would never be in the Trump White House, as he could not be alongside Jared Kushner. Nope. Not that Chris Christie is a prize either.

B.D. used to be the caricature conservative of the story, although having about as much personality as a chair. Could be a measure of Trudeau’s leftishness that B.D. comes across here as a RINO, a not-Trumper, someone to the left of the Nixon-voter that he had once been. — News articles I’ve seen elsewhere headline that middle America doesn’t think ‘Russiagate’ is as important as the blue coasts do.

I have been diagnosed as 70% PTSD by the VA and see a VA psych-doctor several times a year. I told him that I have been having trouble with depression since the election and he said that it is quite common. With a “president” and most of congress having absolutely no understanding of what the Armed Forces are, what they do and what they don’t do, but still having the power to use them as they want, we are in serious trouble as a Country and as part of the World.

I served my country in Viet Nam, and afterword for over 3 decades to protect and defend what belonged to THE CiTIZENS, called taxpayers. PTSD is set off not just by Trump, but by every person he’s put in charge of EVERY agency in the Executive Branch, Interior, Education, EPA, banking, DoD, EVERY APPOINTEE is sworn to DESTROY the agencies they’re charged to administer and the taxpaying public, the REAL GoVERNMENT, is getting screwed by every one! The greatest progress in US history, was when the top tax rate was 93%, interstate highways etc, and Ike warned, accurately, of the military-industrial complex. Ike should have taken down McCarthy, and supported the Hungarian revolution in ’56, so were failures in actually fighting the communist menace not just hyperbole, but there were people with balls around then. No more.

> Where did anyone mention “murder”?

Here’s from @Night Gaunt49’s reply to @Dtroutma, (maybe the 3rd comment on the page):

> Though to assassinate a president is a bad presedent [sic] here and yet…he is a tremendous danger

Last I checked, assassination is murder, regardless of whether you think it will improve the situation.

Using the built-in mechanisms of the Constitution (as amended) to remove a president cannot be considered to be a “coup” (by those using an honest, intelligent, sane definition of the word). To remove a president who has committed high crimes and misdemeanors? That is 100% Constitutional, guaranteed! Or, for instance, to remove a president who is in a coma (and judged to be brain dead) or to remove a Trump who is not in a coma (yet is judged to be brain dead)…….Whoops, let a little satire slip in there.

Ok, someone did speak of assassination, which is murder, of course. However, I am quite sure NG was not advocating assassination. Just because someone mentions it, does not imply advocacy, to be clear.

Trump is very unhealthy so I’m pretty sure he’s going to have a heart attack or stroke at some point.

Many of us dislike Trump. Also, many of us have a deep appreciation for President Obama and all the positive things he was able to achieve, such as health care, environmental reform, etc. Obama was not perfect, however, he was able to be a fairly good president and achieve a great deal considering the obstruction he faced.

The latest goofy thing espoused by the trump lawyer was to blame the secret service for actions by trump campaign. The trump lawyer seems to misappropriate the role of the secret service.

We have already seen many negative issues with trump. I don’t recall anyone mentioning executions.

Getting hard to be optimistic. #PresidentTweety has certainly earned impeachment. My personal favorite among the grounds for impeachment are his attacks on the First Amendment. You know, part of the same Constitution Trump AND the Congress swore to defend and protect. Unfortunately, the so-called Republicans in Congress aren’t interested in anything except for partisan politics, private profits, and personal power. Why would they care if Putin’s goons destroyed the integrity of our elections?

Small glimmer of hope? Maybe the GOP will realize there is a fundamental threat from Trump? The GOP objective is government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%, but Trump wants to eliminate the middlemen. Trump just wants government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald.

Small glimmer of hope is just how incompetent trump is. Trump’s incompetence may save us.