Ann Richards' description of Bush I fits #Lyin'Donald, too: "... Mr. Trump is a clear case of someone born on third base who imagines that he hit a triple ..."

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COMMENTS: 
*  "Will voters ever recognize the truth?" (Krugman)  That, Professor Krugman is the Operative Question! Don Juan Trump is a Megalomaniacal, Sociopathic, vile and disgusting male chauvinist, DELUSIONAL "operator" - a walking Case Study in Psychopathology.  The man is normalizing nastiness. He is Trolling for the presidency. And every step of his sordid campaign is one more nail in this Republic's coffin. His Exaltation of Ignorance and Bullying is the stuff of Dictators.  But why is this so clear to many of us, while legions of voters seem thrilled at his dangerous words and antics?  I suspect it's a kind of Mass Delusion, a type of mass hypnosis, where a tyrannical bullying lunatic has managed to transfer his own Madness into vulnerable members of society.  To my mind, as a retired clinical psychologist, this is the greatest crisis in the history of this nation. It's like a 10-Alarm Fire. It's 9/11 from Within. We are poised on a precipice. From which, if voters do not wake up to the Urgency of our moment, we may witness a Delusional Sociopathic death wish become a presidential nightmare.
*  Being a successful business man is about beating the competition - key word, competition. Being a successful political leader is about co-operation with others and coming to agreements beneficial to all. Key word - co-operation. There are grey areas of course. Trump's vision of success is the business man's vision - beating others, same as Kruschev, Putin, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin. Not about co-operation to better the lives of humankind. He has all but pounded his shoe on the desk and shouted "we will bury you!" Even Nixon knew better. He will "lead" us all to disaster.
*  While real estate development can be hard work, it is far from rocket science. The world is chock full of rich real estate investors, they are a dime a dozen. Success in that field is simply nothing special. Outside of leveraging his pompous personality on "The Apprentice", Trump has failed miserably in virtually every other major venture he has attempted. His operating style has now become crystal clear. Tell them anything they want to hear to get what you want. Say anything you need to in order to obliterate your competition. Morals and ethics are for losers, a concept not unfamiliar to today's Republican Party.
*  ... I am sick to death of Donald Trump. What he says is not that interesting, kind, profound, enduring, or enlightened. If the media has just ignored him or given any other viable candidate the same amount of coverage we would not be in this mess. I for one have stopped watching any political news. There are issues in our everyday world that are virtually ignored because of this. Flint Michigan almost did not make it. The NY Times barely covered it. What else are you all missing? Give Trump a rest or at least highlight the everyday issues the POTUS has to/or should deal with.
*  Excellent dissection of how Mr. Trump performs his magic act during almost any interview: http://politi.co/1TELjM1  Must reading for journalists.
*   Sorry, but I just think Trump is clinically ill. He is THE poster child for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. We have not had a person in the White House with a true need for a psychiatrist since Grant with his alcoholism or Lincoln with his depression. People who say that "Hillary is just as bad" don't have a clue how dangerous this deranged individual can be to the nation. Many of the Republicans in leadership roles are not supporting him, and it is not always because of a policy disagreement. They know him and are flat scared to put him in the driver's seat. As Jeb Bush said, "The man needs therapy."
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Trump’s Delusions of Competence
By Paul Krugman, May 27, 2016

In general, you shouldn’t pay much attention to polls at this point, especially with Republicans unifying around Donald Trump while Bernie Sanders hasn’t conceded the inevitable. Still, I was struck by several recent polls showing Mr. Trump favored over Hillary Clinton on the question of who can best manage the economy.

This is pretty remarkable given the incoherence and wild irresponsibility of Mr. Trump’s policy pronouncements. Granted, most voters probably don’t know anything about that, in part thanks to substance-free news coverage. But if voters don’t know anything about Mr. Trump’s policies, why their favorable impression of his economic management skills?

The answer, I suspect, is that voters see Mr. Trump as a hugely successful businessman, and they believe that business success translates into economic expertise. They are, however, probably wrong about the first, and definitely wrong about the second: Even genuinely brilliant businesspeople are often clueless about economic policy.

An aside: In part this is surely a partisan thing. Over the years, polls have generally, although not universally, shown Republicans trusted over Democrats to manage the economy, even though the economy has consistently performed better under Democratic presidents. But Republicans are much better at promoting legends — for example, by constantly hyping economic and jobs growth under Ronald Reagan, even though the Reagan record was easily surpassed under Bill Clinton.

Back to Mr. Trump: One of the many peculiar things about his run for the White House is that it rests heavily on his claims of being a masterful businessman, yet it’s far from clear how good he really is at the “art of the deal.” Independent estimates suggest that he’s much less wealthy than he says he is, and probably has much lower income than he claims to have, too. But since he has broken with all precedents by refusing to release his tax returns, it’s impossible to resolve such disputes. (And maybe that’s why he won’t release those returns.)

Remember, too, that Mr. Trump is a clear case of someone born on third base who imagines that he hit a triple: He inherited a fortune, and it’s far from clear that he has expanded that fortune any more than he would have if he had simply parked the money in an index fund.

But leave questions about whether Mr. Trump is the business genius he claims to be on one side. Does business success carry with it the knowledge and instincts needed to make good economic policy? No, it doesn’t.

True, the historical record isn’t much of a guide, since only one modern president had a previous successful career in business. And maybe Herbert Hoover was an outlier.

But while we haven’t had many business leaders in the White House, we do know what kind of advice prominent businessmen give on economic policy. And it’s often startlingly bad, for two reasons. One is that wealthy, powerful people sometimes don’t know what they don’t know — and who’s going to tell them? The other is that a country is nothing like a corporation, and running a national economy is nothing like running a business.

Here’s a specific, and relevant, example of the difference. Last fall, the now-presumed Republican nominee declared: “Our wages are too high. We have to compete with other countries.” Then, as has happened often in this campaign, Mr. Trump denied that he had said what he had, in fact, said — straight talker, my toupee. But never mind.

The truth is that wage cuts are the last thing America needs right now: We sell most of what we produce to ourselves, and wage cuts would hurt domestic sales by reducing purchasing power and increasing the burden of private-sector debt. Lower wages probably wouldn’t even help the fraction of the U.S. economy that competes internationally, since they would normally lead to a stronger dollar, negating any competitive advantage.

The point, however, is that these feedback effects from wage cuts aren’t the sort of things even very smart business leaders need to take into account to run their companies. Businesses sell stuff to other people; they don’t need to worry about the effect of their cost-cutting measures on demand for their products. Managing national economic policy, on the other hand, is all about the feedback.

I’m not saying that business success is inherently disqualifying when it comes to policy making. A tycoon who has enough humility to realize that he doesn’t already know all the answers, and is willing to listen to other people even when they contradict him, could do fine as an economic manager. But does this describe anyone currently running for president?

The truth is that the idea that Donald Trump, of all people, knows how to run the U.S. economy is ludicrous. But will voters ever recognize that truth?
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