Political discourse in this country often seems to have been reduced to the repetition of the day’s talking points promulgated on social media by each side.   So taking a break from long-form analysis, here are my talking points for today:

1.     With Trump’s absorption of the Republic National Committee into the Trump organization/family, we no longer have a two-party system.  We have a demagogue and an opposition.   The Republican party had a good 170-year run, but it lies in ruins and cannot be resurrected.  Before Trump puts Putin-like barriers in their way, the center right in America had better start organizing a successor.

2.      It is no longer responsible to tolerate or amplify (as even the most responsible media sources routinely do) the now-almost-daily assurances from Trump apologists that it’s all rhetoric (“Trump being Trump”) and that he won’t actually do any of the “crazy shit” he says.   Don’t believe them.  He means what he says.

3.     Nor should we take any comfort from the same apologists’ messaging that, even if Trump tries to do the “crazy shit,” there are impediments that will stop him, so it’s OK.  Really?  The “establishment” figures who surrounded him before are gone.  The non-MAGA Republicans who had retained some influence within the party have lost it or exited the field.  The Supreme Court is disinclined to stand in his way. 

4.     Unless you stop ignoring Trump’s pathological narcissism, you will never understand him or what we face.  No issue is interesting to Trump unless it involves him personally (and most issues are re-framed so they are about him).   The world is divided into friends and enemies.  Friends are those who flatter him and appear for the moment to buy into his narcissistic narrative of greatness; enemies are everyone else.  Information is credible if it supports his narcissistic narrative or advances his goals.  Information is dismissed as “fake” or a “hoax” if it does not.  Understanding Trump really is that simple. 

5.     The damage he has already done to America’s standing in the world is devastating.  This week’s statement green-lighting Putin to attack NATO members was the most damaging yet.  The late Senator John McCain nailed it in 2018 following Trump’s first meeting with Putin: “Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. . . . Coming close on the heels of President Trump’s bombastic and erratic conduct towards our closest friends and allies in Brussels and Britain, today’s press conference marks a recent low point in the history of the American Presidency.”   This week was worse.

Talking points are for talking.  Please.