Trump is a President on speed dial

Coal-fired power plants generate a lot of electricity, and so does President Donald J. Trump. Over the weekend he engaged in a marathon of hip-shooting that would have shamed Annie Oakley. He was on unhinged speed dial.

Hard to know where to start.

Maybe with the silliest, or most menacing: He’s thinking about a third term, something that is specifically prohibited by the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution. 

“I’m not joking,” he said, although it is a long way off. Trump says he's trying to figure out how to capture a third term as president. Personally, I think he is just trying to make the Left even more paranoid.  

Trump is 78 now. In four years he will be 82, and at the end of a four-year term he would be 86, the oldest-ever. (Joe Biden was 82 when he ended his presidency.)

“There are methods which you could do it,” said Trump, cracking grammar, without further clarification.

How can you get around the two-term rule?

One way is by appointing a surrogate, or a shill, to stand in for you. The old switcheroo.

When forced to leave office by term limits in 2008, Russian President Vladimir Putin retained control over the executive branch as prime minister. The president in name only was Dmitry Medvedev, a Putin stooge.

Putin later got rid of inconvenient term limits. “You can do that?” Trump did not say out loud.

Trump might think of running his wife, Melania, for President, a move Alabama Gov. George Wallace put into play when he was term-limited, but later dropped when the limit was scrapped. “He did get rid of term limits,” Trump was thinking. 

Who would be Trump’s stooge, if not Melania? JD Vance? Marco Rubio? Michael Waltz? Marjorie Taylor Green? The mind reels.

Speaking of Putin, over the years Trump has found a lot to like about him. In an internationally embarrassing 2018 press conference in Finland, Trump took Putin’s assurances that he did not meddle in the U.S. election over U.S. intelligence agencies insistence that he had.  

“I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia, said Trump. “Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,” added Trump.

Well, if you can’t trust a former KGB officer, who can you trust?

Over the weekend, a possible change of heart.

Trump told NBC News journalist Kristen Welker that he was “pissed off” at Putin for denigrating remarks the Russia dictator made about Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy (even though Trump himself  had demeaned Zelenskyy by calling him a dictator). 

If Russia tries to obstruct a peace deal, Trump threatened to impose secondary tariffs on Russian oil. 

That was a threat, but Trump actually paused arms and intelligence to Ukraine (since rescinded). Ukraine got action, Russia got threats. 

Keeping up the threats, he said if the Iranians did not come to terms with the U.S. on its move toward a nuclear weapon, he would bomb them.

"If they don't make a deal, there will be bombing," Trump said in a telephone interview with Reuters. "It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before." 

Also on the table was the use of military force to annex Greenland, that fever dream he won’t let go of. This is the guy who bragged there were no wars on his watch, and now he wants to start two?

Are those Diet Cokes rotting his brain cells?

Let’s not forget the tariff mess.

He was quoted as saying about car prices going up, “I couldn’t care less,” which should be shocking from a man who promised to reduce prices on everything starting on Day One.

To be fair, what he meant was the prices on imported cars, which would then result in more people buying made-in-America cars. 

That’s fine — more Americans buying American cars. That’s a good thing.

But the business genius surely knows, from Econ 101, what happens when there is more demand for a product, like American cars.

Prices go up.