Will Trump be the first president to commit suicide in office?

His ego is fragile, and the job doesn't come with a lot of the fawning and bowing that he's always surrounded himself with.

I foresee, in all honesty, some serious depression issues on his part in a couple months, when he realizes Congress, the American people and the world aren't going to "just trust him."

He's got the power to take us all with him!

Very funny suggestion, seen on Facebook.

Tim@timgostony wrote:

Obama should resign a day early to make Biden the 45th President and ruin all of Trump's merchandise

I don't get how that would ruin any merchandise? Trump's empire in in real-estate, not hats that say "45th President." In fact, I haven't seen one.

When President Pence takes over February 1st who do you suppose his running-mate will be?

NoCoPilot wrote:

When President Pence takes over February 1st who do you suppose his running-mate will be?

He won't have a running mate (no hyphenation, please) because he won't be campaigning for an election.

Okay didact, "who will be his vice president?" I thought about not using "running mate" because he's not "running" but I thought it was clearer than "vice."

Yes, I can be didactic (which I do not consider an insult). But when I run across this type of error (and it's very common) in  magazines, books, or newspapers, I can't carp at the writer or editor. So I must take it out on you.

What could be clearer than "vice president"?
I'm sure that Pence would prefer John the Baptist, but he is not a Republican. And he's dead.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I foresee, in all honesty, some serious depression issues on his part in a couple months, when he realizes Congress, the American people and the world aren't going to "just trust him."

Never happen. Trump has serious mental defects and he can not ever consider that anything is his fault. In his tiny little warped mind: He is always right. Anything that goes wrong is someone else's fault. Anyone who doesn't trust him is an enemy, not an honorable opponent. The positions of others which are in opposition to his are because the others are idiots who hate him personally.

His paranoia and inflated ego will never allow him to consider damaging himself.

Well I hope you're right. I don't wish anyone to do himself harm.

Normally, I would agree with you. But there's nothing normal about this situation.

And the harm he does will most certainly not be to himself.

I've been thinking about what you said, and I think you're wrong.

Here's why.  

Trump has lots of ideas on "how to make America great again" and he has adopted many other ideas from the Heritage Foundation.  Now, it will rather quickly become evident that these ideas have the exact opposite result from the intended, and he won't be able to blame anyone because I believe Congress will enact most of what he asks for. Therefore within six months or so he should have a pretty good idea that he's headed for George W. Bush territory, and he'll have to admit that everything he believes is wrong.

That will be pretty devastating for someone who thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and only he can fix things. His oversized ego will be in for a huge deflation.

Quote :

(...) it will rather quickly become evident (...)

I wonder how quickly things will turn sour though — the majority backed GWB well into his second term.

Of course, even if Trump ignites a trade war, sends troops to Iraq and Syria, leaves 20 million uninsured, prices rise, stocks plummet, and the US suffers a domestic terror attack all within six months his followers will know who's really to blame — "Lock her up!"

NoCoPilot wrote:

Trump has lots of ideas on "how to make America great again"

I don't believe he does.

NoCoPilot wrote:

...he'll have to admit that everything he believes is wrong.

It will never occur to him that he could be wrong. If one of his ideas or policies does not work, he will find someone - some "enemy" - to blame. It is not possible for him to accept failure or even a small mistake. There will never be anything for him to regret, because he will never fail.

kilo wrote:

I wonder how quickly things will turn sour though —

With these cabinet picks, I'm guessing pretty damn fast.

• Rex Tillerson - State (an oil billionaire with no political experience and uncomfortably close personal ties to Putin)
  
• Mike Pompeo - CIA Director (falsely claimed that US Muslim organizations and religious leaders had not condemned terrorism. He called those at the CIA who participated in torture “heroes, not pawns in some liberal game being played by the ACLU and [former intelligence committee chair] Senator [Dianne] Feinstein”. Opponent of closing the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, a vocal critic of the Iran nuclear deal and a supporter of NSA bulk data collection. Has called for “the traitor Edward Snowden” to be executed.)
  
• Steve Mnuchin - Treasury (a Goldman Sachs inside trader - Democratic senator Sherrod Brown said: “This isn’t draining the swamp – it’s stocking it with alligators.” )
  
• Jeff Sessions - Attorney General (Sessions’ last confirmation hearing, for a federal judgeship under Ronald Reagan in 1986, was derailed when former colleagues testified that he used the N-word, called a black assistant US attorney “boy” and joked that he thought the Ku Klux Klan were “OK until I found out they smoked pot”)
  
• Andrew Puzder - Labor (Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s CEO, vehement critic of government regulation and staunch opponent of minimum wage laws)
  
• Tom Price - HHS (staunchly opposed to Obamacare. Attempted in 2015 to defund Planned Parenthood through a budget maneuver. Seen as opponent of women’s health programs. Described as having “a 100% pro-life record”)
  
• Rick Perry - Energy (Perry, along with secretary of state pick Rex Tillerson and EPA administrator pick Scott Pruitt, is a climate change skeptic. Perry attempted in a 2011 presidential debate to say that he would as president eliminate the department of energy, but he forgot the name of the department)
  
• Ben Carson - HUD (a critic of government welfare, has called for private charities to shoulder welfare needs. A purveyor of bizarre conspiracy theories and a provocateur who compares abortion to slavery and same-sex marriage to pedophilia)
  
• Scott Pruitt - EPA (A climate change denier and longtime enemy of the EPA, whose rule he has called “unlawful and overreaching”. He said in May on the overwhelming scientific evidence that human activity is causing the planet to warm: “That debate is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.” Environmental groups say that Pruitt has been a “puppet” of the fossil fuel industry)
  
• Wilbur Ross - Commerce (billionaire critic of US trade deals who has lamented the decline of American manufacturing. Dubbed a “vulture” and “king of bankruptcy” because of his knack for extracting a profit from failing businesses. Helped Trump keep control of his failing Taj Mahal casino in the 1990s by persuading investors not to push him out. An explosion at a mine in West Virginia, which his company had bought a few weeks earlier, killed 12 miners in 2002)
  
• Ryan Zinke - Interior (voted in favor of oil and gas drilling projects on federal lands and supported controversial energy projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline)
  
• Betsy DeVos - Education (Daughter-in-law of Richard DeVos, co-founder of marketing company Amway. The family has a net worth of $5.1bn, according to Forbes. Her lobbying for school vouchers has been criticized for undermining public sector schools (which critics note neither she nor her children attended). DeVos’s brother is Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, a private security contractor notorious for its lucrative and deadly role in the Iraq war)
  
• Linda McMahon - SBA (ran World Wrestling Entertainment with husband and founder Vince McMahon, whose net worth Forbes pins at about $1bn. Spent tens of millions of dollars on a couple of senate runs, only to be rejected by the voters of Connecticut. She donated millions to Trump’s campaign and has given millions to his foundation, too.)
  
• Michael Flynn - NSA (known for his scandalously broad-brush criticism of Islam and flirtation with conspiracy theories. Flynn has falsely claimed that Sharia law is spreading across the US and that the nation is in the midst of a world war with radical Islamists)
  
• Steve Bannon - Chief Strategist (former chairman of Breitbart News. Boasted that he made Breitbart the “platform for the alt-right”, a clearinghouse for hate speech of all kinds including white nationalism, anti-semitism, immigrant-hatred and misogyny)
  
• Sean Spicer - Press Sec't (pugnacious critic of the notion that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee or that the Trump administration’s trade policies are undercooked)
  
• Carl Icahn - Regulatory Czar (estimates his net worth at $17.6bn. Staunchly anti-regulation. Made a fortune as an “activist investor” using minority stakes in companies to do battle with corporate boards in order to wring out short-term profits)
  
• Thomas Bossert - Homeland Security (Argued in a 2015 op-ed that the use of military force in Iraq “was and remains just” and has argued for a more muscular approach in Syria)
  

It's amazing that he was able to fill every post with someone who is completely unqualified for the position. You would think that, just by accident, he would make one rational choice.

Jeff Sessions really worries me. Fucking little weasel. "Good people don't smoke marijuana." "Religious people are more honest than secular people." Did I mention that he's a fucking little weasel?

_Howard wrote:

You would think that, just by accident, he would make one rational choice.

David Shulkin at Veteran's Affairs

Mattis at Defense
Kelly for Homeland Security
Lighthizer at Trade
Chao at Transportation

I've begun to wonder if there isn't a type of delicious backward logic involved in putting people opposed to various agencies of the government in charge of those very same agencies.

Either they will rapidly roll up the carpets and lock the doors... or they may dig in, learn something about these agencies they wanted to abolish, and actually come to appreciate the people in them and the work they do.

Maybe. Who knows?

NoCoPilot wrote:

Mattis at Defense
Kelly for Homeland Security
Lighthizer at Trade
Chao at Transportation

I hope you didn't list these as good choices he's made.

They are less onerous than his others. Some, like Mattis, are even highly praised.

NoCoPilot wrote:

They are less onerous than his others.  Some, like Mattis, are even highly praised.

"Less onerous" Now there's a great recommendation.

It took an act of Congress to grant a waiver to Mattis. A military man should not be Defense Secretary. There are reasons why the law prohibits it.

I'm less worried about that than, say, his choice for Interior. At least Mattis has experience in his nomination field.

No, he doesn't.

It is often said that civilians are a lot more cavalier about the use of military force than military veterans.