Trump is unfit for office, dangerous for the nation, and must be impeached

If you are wondering how long we can go between massive new Trump scandals, the answer is zero minutes. There is never not a Trump scandal. There is never a moment when the man is well. We will never have a moment's peace; we may already be in hell.

On Sunday night—hang on, I want to pause here to make sure I have not hallucinated this—all right, let's move on—on Sunday night, we learned that seditious criminal Donald Trump sent a diplomatic message to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre suggesting that because Donald wanted to get a Nobel Peace Prize but didn't, if Donald now pursues non-peaceful paths to seize Greenland it is Norway's fault.

It is the most batshit deranged thing to ever exit Trump's brain. It cannot even be counted as the ravings of a tantruming child. And it is, according to multiple major international news outlets, quite real.

PBS News' Nick Schifrin first reported the text of the letter as distributed to "multiple European ambassadors in Washington," apparently with the intent of shaming(???) Gahr Støre.

Dear Ambassador:

President Trump has asked that the following message, shared with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, be forwarded to your [named head of government/state]

"Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

Right. So, first things first, this is the babbling of a clearly demented madman and that is where all of the conversation needs to start. He is not well. He is a very long way from well. He appears to be the most incapacitated president we've ever had, and I am including the dead ones in that assessment.

For the record:

1. Norway's government does not hand out Nobel Peace Prizes. They are awarded by the Nobel Committee. The Norwegian parliament appoints its members but has no actual say in how the prize is awarded; Trump has apparently sat through repeated explanations of this but continues to not understand it.
2. There are written documents establishing Denmark's control of Greenland. Just because he has not seen them does not mean they do not exist. Is he an infant? Does he seriously not understand that things exist whether or not he personally perceives them?
3. The rest of that is such unhinged gibberish that it's not even worth the effort to continue.

What is noteworthy about this insane little tantrum is Trump's statement that he no longer feels "an obligation to think purely of Peace," now that he did not get a big special prize for thinking about peace, which is clearly meant to signal Donald's willingness to seize Greenland in not peaceful ways. Also, it's insane. The man is transparently insane, did I mention that? Who the fuck would come up with such an embarrassing, juvenile, obviously unhinged petty rant because they did not get a damn award they were fishing for?

So we've got a threat here, intentionally broadcast to a host of European diplomatic corps, that because Big Baby Boom-Boom did not get his desired candy, it's everyone else's fault if Big Baby Boom-Boom starts killing people and seizing the property of fellow NATO treaty signatories. That is where we at, and it is only January 19th. For. Fucks. Sake.

We know Trump's cabinet members will not recognize this latest missive as the burping tantrum of a spiraling dementia patient who should in no way be in control of even a modest-sized police force, much less the world's most powerful military. Donald has surrounded himself with criminals, seditionists, genocide advocates and psychopaths; there is nobody in that crowd who believes attacking a fellow NATO member might finally be the one unreasonable thing that would prove Trump unfit.

Prior to sending off his Official Diplomatic Tantrum, Trump's previous weekend move was to announce new 10% tariffs on the nations who have sent troops to Greenland for its defense, increasing to 25% tariffs in June if Denmark has not agreed to a deal to surrender Greenland.

Because he is insane. And because he still, to this day, does not understand that tariffs are taxes on Americans who buy imported goods, not on nations that sell those goods. But mostly because he is insane.

You would think, after all of this insanity, that Republican lawmakers would be getting increasingly alarmed by their babbling and batshit crazy mad king, because going to war with Europe or using the threat of war to seize another NATO member's territory will make the United States an international pariah for several generations, and up until at least recently there were Republican lawmakers who were educated in things like laws and economics and diplomacy and could recognize the simple truth of the situation: Current U.S. dominance in the international order relies entirely on international cooperation; our economy, in particular, is fully premised on other nations buying up our debt at cheap rates because they believe we are Not Insane.

But no. No, Senate Republicans appear to be willing to go to fucking war over Greenland if that is what it takes for Dear Leader to settle down for his afternoon nap.

No matter how much you loathe Ted Cruz, you will never despise him as much as he despises both America and himself. Ted Cruz and his fellow senators would rather watch America burn and toast marshmallows over the fire than stand up to a seditionist sex predator so mired in narcissistic delusion that would threaten a war over not winning a "peace prize."

There is no good answer for what NATO members should do, in that every reasonable response is escalatory—but almost certainly now necessary. Before Trump's latest screed, they were contemplating (cautiously) economic sanctions against the U.S., sanctions targeted as much as possible at Trump's allied oligarchs. The world also has the option to, as I mentioned, simply stop buying U.S. debt, sending the whole world into economic chaos and this country into an almost certain depression.

But this has gone beyond what mere counter-tariffs and similar economic nicks can patch up, now that Trump has openly declared to once-allies that he no longer "feels the need" to pursue "Peace" in his bizarre and possibly dream-inspired quest for Greenland. This is a threat of war, and European nations need to work aggressively to make it clear to U.S. lawmakers that their governments will not abide Trump's obvious incapacity and hostility any longer.

NATO members should begin expelling U.S. diplomats from their nations. I'm quite serious. It is true that this would "harm diplomacy," but diplomacy is already an absurdist farce from the American side, managed as much by Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner and whichever of Trump's billionaire buddies wants better access to oil or minerals or vacation properties; there is no point in pretending otherwise.

European nations should also begin doling out economic sanctions against the U.S., especially against Republican-controlled interests, now rather than waiting for each new Trump hallucination and pronouncement.

And European nations should suspend U.S. tourist visas, blocking Americans from their nations for as long as the threat of Trump's Very Stupid War lingers.

The goal of these things should not be to rein Trump in, but to pressure the Republican Congress into impeaching and removing Trump. Flat-out. He is unfit for office; he is unimaginably dangerous; with every passing day he hurtles towards new acts of war against the American people and the international community alike.

He is unfit, and if Republicans will not remove him then the world needs to use every possible tool to pressure the American public and government into getting their heads out of their asses and doing something about it.

This is insanity. Democrats had better be drafting articles of impeachment this very hour, European nations had better be responding to this latest Trump dementia-burp as the threat of war it so clearly is, and any Republican who still backs Trump now that he has proven himself a frothing madman needs to be hounded out of both office and the public sphere. This decaying idiot cannot possibly be allowed to launch a war of conquest against our closest allies, and there is now no way out of this era of crisis except to remove him before it happens.