Among many conservatives I know, the view of Trump is that chaotic management, clownish behavior and ideological apostasies are irritants, not calamities, and prices worth paying for deregulation, tax cuts, and conservative courts.

-- Bret Stephens

a president who mixes ineffectiveness in legislating, incompetence in administration, and an impulse toward “toughness” as the response to every challenge

The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive, and you’ve cast your lot with the destructive people. -- Steve Jobs to Rupert Murdoch

It’s not been lost on plenty of people that he legislates for the rich, jabbers for the mob, and gives scarcely a hoot for those in between.

Donald Trump is impulse-driven, ignorant, narcissistic and intellectually dishonest. So you’d think that those of us in the anti-Trump camp would go out of our way to show we’re not like him — that we are judicious, informed, mature and reasonable. --David Brooks

By smearing his opponents, championing conspiracy theories and pursuing vendettas, President Tru​mp has reverted to his darkest political tactics in spite of a pandemic hurting millions of Americans.

For most of the past 75 years, the Republican attitude about government has been rooted in a deep skepticism of authority that says, in essence: Success doesn’t take a village; it takes a determined individual whose government isn’t standing in the way.

But the larger question looming over Bolton’s book isn’t about its subject. It’s about its author — and everyone else who joined the administration without illusions, participated in it without defiance, and exited it without shame. How do people like Bolton, Reince Priebus, Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson or (when he eventually departs) Pompeo justify their witting, willing service to this witless, wicked president?

This is very good: Emergency Trump Cartoons from the New Yourker>

Trump is a man ruled by jealousies and insecurities.