Thread by @HoarseWisperer

Crazypants McGee is kitchen sinking the absolute f*** out of this press conference.

His answer to the only question: Hillary didn’t go to Wisconsin enough which is really bad because the FBI people were texting each other bad things which were also bad so... here’s Mike Pompeo.

Trump looks and sounds like a doddering old bus station drunkard mumbling incoherently as a cop pokes him with their toe and says “Sir, you can’t sleep in the Greyhound Station.”

Trump only adopts this sleepy tone and affect when he has been badly chastened publicly and knows his facade is teetering on the edge of failing.

He then goes dark, regroups, broods and simmers, and then erupts in a loco lawn sprinkler of angry nutbaggery.

Babyfingers is trotting out a million small lines. They’re a narcissists feelers for a pulse. He’s fumbling in the dark trying to find a new line of rhetoric that gets any emotional reaction.

These lines are all too small though. Nearly all are old and long failed.

This is how it goes with narcissists.

They have no inner life, no internal truth, no stable thoughts or beliefs.

They’re empty shells locked in an endless pantomime of whatever they think will “work”.

Life is an endless focus group.

Trump is at his lowest point when he loses control of the narrative and has no idea how to get it back.

He’s there right now.

Usually he cocoons after these moments. Goes dark.

I assumed he’d flail a bit longer trying to stave off all of this sticking to him but maybe not.

Based solely on this press conference, I’d say we might get a brief reprieve from Trump’s fiesta of loco.

Maybe a quiet night and morning.

It’ll be brief though. This is all too big and threatening for him to keep from going full raging loon for long.

The biggest tell from this press conference is that Trump knows he does not have anything close to a good angle to fight back against the scandal.

He knows he hasn’t found it. He knows he’s taking bullets and has none in the chamber.

I gotta say, with the press conf now over, that was a bit startling.

I had expected Trump to still be very much in the phase that comes right before he cocoons: a spray of frenzied, manic, angry accusations and claims.

He swings wildly like a kid trying to find the piñata.

It’s the desperation of a person who sees the train of public shaming bearing down and knows they can’t avoid it.

He was far more into the next phase though... the weirdly docile, resigned-sounding retreat of a man temporarily on his back

It usually makes me a little uncomfortable when his behavior is out of pattern but in this case, it suggests things which are largely good.

Trump likely knows what’s coming and knows he is in real trouble which he is ill-prepared to even try to neutralize.

If he’s quiet (for him) through noon tomorrow, don’t be surprised at all.

I think that’s where we are.

There’s a chance he’ll get revved into a lather by Fox News but I think the lunacy is on hold... for the moment.

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