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Charlie Sykes on a rampage this morning.

TDS

Today seems like a good day to (once again) re-up something I wrote several years ago:

Near the end of the miniseries Band of Brothers, the guys from Easy Company are shown riding in a convoy of trucks past a bedraggled column of German prisoners, some of whom are riding in carts drawn by horses.

Private David Webster is appalled by the scene and shouts at them:

“Hey, you! That's right, you stupid Kraut bastards! That's right! Say hello to Ford, and General fuckin’ Motors! You stupid fascist pigs! Look at you! You have horses! What were you thinking? Dragging our asses halfway around the world, interrupting our lives. . . For what, you ignorant, servile scum! What the fuck are we doing here?”

I woke up this morning thinking about him.

Admittedly, the parallels are hardly exact, but as I’m looking over the clusterfuck of American conservatism, I feel a kinship with Webster.

What were you thinking? You cowardly, ignorant, servile scum?

It’s not like you were not warned. Again and again.

It’s not as if it wasn’t obvious from the very beginning who Donald Trump was. You had to know it would come to something like this.

Now look at you. You have Trump.

**

As far back as August 2015, I wrote that Trump was “a cartoon version of every left-wing media stereotype of the reactionary, nativist, misogynist right.”

Back then there was still time to say no. Some of us desperately made the case that he was a disaster. In May 2016, on the last appearance I will ever make on Fox News, I said:

Donald Trump is a serial liar, a con man who mocks the disabled and women. He’s a narcissist and a bully, a man with no fixed principles who has the vocabulary of an emotionally insecure nine-year-old.

So no, I don’t want to give him control of the IRS, the FBI, and the nuclear codes. That’s just me.

We were, of course, dismissed; accused of suffering from TDS — Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Yes, we were told, he was crude and rude, but if you squint hard enough — and ignore the “mean tweets” — he looked like a more or less conventional conservative: he cut taxes and regulations; he came around to supporting NATO. Character was overrated, anyway. Our 401Ks were fat and happy.

So, one after another, Republicans fell back from one red line to another. Instead of taking one of the many off-ramps offered to them, they returned him to power. And have now transformed the GOP into a Trump rubber-stamp-cum-cult.

Trump, of course, is who he always was; except angrier, more bitter, and still unburdened by either principles or guardrails.

So, I have to ask what remains of the GOP:

You elected a convicted felon to the most powerful office in the world — broadly immune from accountability, and literally above the law in his official duties. WTF did you think would happen?

Now look at you, with the chaos bubbling all around you. On again, off again, pointless trade wars with our allies; endless graft; a slash and burn through the government that endangers everything from air travel to Social Security; pardons for rioters and crooked politicians; assaults on the rule of law and free speech; the abandonment of allies; and now a crumbling stock market.

What you called Trump Derangement Syndrome turns out to have been a warning — and a prophecy. And you ignored it, you cowardly, ignorant, servile scum.

**

So we got scenes like this from the White House: As Americans lost trillions of dollars in the markets, the president was hawking cars for the world’s richest man.

US President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speak to the press as they stand next to a Tesla vehicle on the South Portico of the White House on March 11, 2025 in Washington, DC.

<Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images>

<Photo: MANDEL NGAN via Getty Images>

Photographers noted that Trump was carrying notes from a Tesla sales pitch.

More at link:
https://open.substack.com/pub/charliesykes/p/tds-t...

Meanwhile, Tesla board members are selling their TSLA shares hand over fist.

Great idea for SNL cold open- forget the Trump and Musk impersonators this week. Just show the SNL script writers in a room attempting to decide which insane story of the week they will write about.

Donald Trump is a serial liar, a con man who mocks the disabled and women. He’s a narcissist and a bully, a man with no fixed principles who has the vocabulary of an emotionally insecure nine-year-old.

<sigh> Any fool should have seen this! But a cultist is blind.

Any fool should have seen this! But a cultist is blind.

I read an interesting take the other day which posits that Trump Derangement Syndrome is real …. But that the cult has it exactly backwards.

For instance, when Trump first announced tariffs on Canada he claimed it was “an emergency”, and necessary to stop the flow of fentanyl across the border. No one in US or Canadian law enforcement, or in drug enforcement seriously believes that there is any significant quantity of drugs crossing that border (unlike the one with Mexico). For the record, 43 pounds of fentanyl was seized coming across the Canadian border versus 21,148 pounds seized on the southern border last year. For MAGAts, it was “doesn’t matter, whatever he says.”

But if you’re going to have a reasonably reasonable reason, it does matter, otherwise you’re just letting the crazy hang out there for all to see.

Perhaps a more obvious example is the hysterical reaction to Bill Clinton getting a blow job (and suffering unconvinced impeachment for it), while Trump’s serial wives, philandering, friendships with Jeffrey Epstein, and comments caught on tape are given a complete pass. “Doesn’t matter.” Derangement, you see? Ability to ignore plainly obvious evidence.

What are we to make of the fact that Hillary kept her email on a private server “Oh, the National security!” while Musk’s 20-year olds batch copy hard drives from just about every government agency and leave them laying around for anybody with or without security clearance to wade through? That’s not just conflicting sentiments, it’s plain crazy.

Leading up to the election he told his fans that if Kamala is elected the stock market would come down immediately. So now that he’s elected the stock market has come down immediately, yet the noise from the faithful is “crickets”. (Indeed, on Kudlow last night I watched Maria claim the recession is because of - you guessed it - Joe Biden). If this isn’t deranged I don’t know what to call it.

They repeat any ridiculous meme, no matter how debunked (“they’re eat the dogs and cats”) without shame, they put a guy in charge of the FBI who wants to empty the building, and a #2 without a dime of experience, and if you don’t think that’s somehow deranged, I can’t help you.

I think it’s clear that he isn’t “governing” as much as “revenging” on any and all who have slighted him in some way over the years. He fumbled and floundered his way through his first term, but this time he had the Heritage Foundation write a playbook, disavow it, and then implement it page by page. And from the sycophants, nothing.

Yes, there is a Trump Derangement Syndrome. But it’s not what they claim, it’s exactly the opposite.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/10...

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