Even chronically insipid David Brooks sees it.

Trump has shown that he is not a normal candidate. He is a political rampage charging ever more wildly out of control. And no, he cannot be changed.

He cannot be contained because he is psychologically off the chain. With each passing week he displays the classic symptoms of medium-grade mania in more disturbing forms: inflated self-esteem, sleeplessness, impulsivity, aggression and a compulsion to offer advice on subjects he knows nothing about.

I hadn’t thought of mania…except maybe subconsciously I had, since I had thought of grandiosity, which tends to remind me of mania. Anyway yes – the guy is high on himself.

His speech patterns are like something straight out of a psychiatric textbook. Manics display something called “flight of ideas.” It’s a formal thought disorder in which ideas tumble forth through a disordered chain of associations. One word sparks another, which sparks another, and they’re off to the races. As one trained psychiatrist said to me, compare Donald Trump’s speaking patterns to a Robin Williams monologue, but with insults instead of jokes.

There’s the Beckett-Joyce style. Oh look, a squirrel!

He also cannot be contained because he lacks the inner equipment that makes decent behavior possible. So many of our daily social interactions depend on a basic capacity for empathy. But Trump displays an absence of this quality.

That, I suppose, is why I keep pointing out, in fear and wonder, that there’s nothing good about him. It’s that complete and utter lack of basic empathy.

He looks at the grieving mother of a war hero and is unable to recognize her pain. He hears a crying baby and is unable to recognize the infant’s emotion or the mother’s discomfort. He is told of women being sexually harassed at Fox News and is unable to recognize their trauma.

…

Trump is underdeveloped and unregulated.

He is a slave to his own pride, compelled by a childlike impulse to lash out at anything that threatens his fragile identity. He appears to have no ability to experience reverence, which is the foundation for any capacity to admire or serve anything bigger than self, to want to learn about anything beyond self, to want to know and deeply honor the people around you.

That’s more insight than I expect from David Brooks.

It’s also why this whole thing is so hideously depressing. It depresses me that so many people are not only not repelled by Trump, they actually like and admire him. As I’ve said before, that’s not even the politics, it’s the nature of the guy himself – the lack of empathy and capacity to admire or serve anything bigger than self.

A striking opinion piece in the NY Times by a former honcho at the CIA. When he was a government official he kept his presidential preferences to himself; he’s voted for both Democrats and Republicans; he’s not a member of either party. Now, he wants to explain why Hillary Clinton is a better choice than Donald Trump. Better. Not just preferable, but better.

Two strongly held beliefs have brought me to this decision. First, Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief. I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president — keeping our nation safe. Second, Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.

I spent four years working with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, most often in the White House Situation Room. In these critically important meetings, I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with a compelling argument.

Two questions. Could anyone possibly claim that final sentence could be uttered to describe Trump? When he’s neither prepared nor detail-oriented nor thoughtful nor inquisitive nor willing to change his mind? And could anyone deny those are all vital qualities for the job Trump is applying for?

In sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump has no experience on national security. Even more important, the character traits he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief.

These traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law.

But then, to balance that a little, there are his good qualities…Except that there aren’t. He has none. His bad ones crowd them all out – there’s no room left.

The dangers that flow from Mr. Trump’s character are not just risks that would emerge if he became president. It is already damaging our national security.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated.

Mr. Putin is a great leader, Mr. Trump says, ignoring that he has killed and jailed journalists and political opponents, has invaded two of his neighbors and is driving his economy to ruin. Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests — endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States.

In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.

There’s more, but that’s a slam dunk right there.

Slate picks out a sentence uttered by Donald Trump as a glowing example of his way of changing the subject every six words or so. It’s very…what it is.

Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.

There actually is a train of thought there at the beginning, heavily disguised though it is by Trump’s limited vocabulary and syntax. He’s saying that it’s a lefty canard that right-wingers are stupid, and he’s not stupid, dammit, he went to a Name business school and got good grades there and then made a lot of money.

Sure, it no doubt is a left canard, though there’s also an equivalent canard on the right – lefties are all sentimental mush-heads who can’t see what’s right in front of them.

Anyway. Trump is not bright.

Some veterans are unhappy with Trump. The Guardian reports:

The backlash against Donald Trump escalated on Thursday as angry US military veterans arrived on Capitol Hill urging Republican leaders to withdraw their support for the party’s nominee.

The protest came after a torrid week for the maverick candidate, whose criticism of Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of an American Muslim soldier killed in Iraq in 2004, triggered a Republican revolt.

“Maverick”? That’s a stupid word for what he is. (It was a label for Palin, too. I guess it’s a euphemism for totally unqualified and unfit?)

The veterans presented a petition on Thursday to the office of Senator John McCain , a Vietnam war veteran and former prisoner of war who was the Republican presidential nominee in 2008. McCain joined the condemnation of Trump this week, but stopped short of withdrawing his endorsement of him.

Let’s not forget, though, that McCain allowed Sarah Palin to be his running mate. She was barely more qualified than Trump.

“Donald Trump and his surrogates have demonstrated that their bigotry and hate speech know no bounds,” Nate Terani, the first Muslim American to serve in the US Navy Presidential Honor Guard, told reporters. “Donald Trump is a racist and bigot and wholly unfit for this position.”

Yes, yes he is.

The petition on MoveOn.org was started by Perry O’Brien, who served as a medic in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division and was discharged as a conscientious objector in 2004. “Every vet I know is absolutely outraged,” he said on Wednesday. “Trump is someone who clearly does not share core American values and the values that we in the military hold dear: respect, sacrifice, selflessness.

“When he said he’s always wanted a Purple Heart, it showed he doesn’t know what a Purple Heart is. It’s like saying: ‘I want to be shot in the face’ or ‘I want to be blown up’. He doesn’t have a certain awareness that there are some things you don’t do or don’t say in this country.”

Well except that’s the whole thing about Trump – he wants the Purple Heart without the injury. He just wants the Purple Heart. It’s very comparable to the way he wants to be president, if you think about it. He doesn’t want to do the job, he doesn’t want to do the work, he doesn’t want to do what it takes to qualify for doing the job – he just wants to have it, like a toy or a bauble.

Asked about the prospect of Trump as commander-in-chief, O’Brien remarked: “His recklessness, his instinct towards authoritarianism, his unhealthy attraction towards dictators – all these things raise questions. Why would a soldier go to fight knowing that, if they’re killed, President Donald Trump would slander their family? Who would enlist knowing he would attack their mother if she disagrees with him?”

…

David Callaway, a former Marine corps physician who served in Iraq and Kuwait in 2003, said: “For me it boils down to this: when you are in the military, you swear this oath and it’s service above self. For Trump, it’s all about service to self.

“He has never served any other cause except for his own greed and wealth, and for veterans the idea that this man would support and defend the constitution and the ideals on which our country was founded – that being liberty, equality, opportunity – initially was comical and now it’s just frightening.”

The point about serving any other cause is an important one. Trump is all about Trump: Trump as billionaire winner. Money is all he knows. He has all the depth of a dollar bill. He’s like that awful guy at the party or the restaurant, who keeps erupting with his awful opinions while everyone else tries hard to look away. His looming presence is a nightmare.

That item about Trump’s wanting to use the nukes? I didn’t post about it yesterday because there was only one source, but ThinkProgress has collected examples of his saying it in public on the record, so.

On Wednesday, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough passed on an intriguing piece of gossip: Donald Trump, speaking with a “foreign policy expert,” repeatedly asked “why can’t we use nuclear weapons.”

Scarborough’s claim was thinly sourced. He didn’t reveal the identity of the expert advising Trump or even where he learned the information. Information attributed to anonymous sources is inherently suspect.

But one need not rely on anonymous sources to glean Trump’s views on nuclear weapons. He has broached the subject repeatedly on the campaign trail. Several of his public comments are similar to Scarborough’s account while others are terrifying in their own way.

They provide a video clip.

And transcribe it:

MATTHEWS: Well, why would you — why wouldn’t you just say, “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about nuclear weapons. Presidents don’t talk about use of nuclear weapons”?

TRUMP: The question was asked — we were talking about NATO — which, by the way, I say is obsolete and we pay a dis —

MATTHEWS: But you got hooked into something you shouldn`t have talked about.

TRUMP: I don’t think I — well, someday, maybe.

MATTHEWS: When? Maybe?

TRUMP: Of course. If somebody —

MATTHEWS: Where would we drop — where would we drop a nuclear weapon in the Middle East?

TRUMP: Let me explain. Let me explain.

Somebody hits us within ISIS — you wouldn`t fight back with a nuke?

…

MATTHEWS: OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in 45, heard it. They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.

TRUMP: Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?

[MSNBC, March 30, 2016]

You can watch him saying it:

Exactly.

Republicans nominate dangerously insane person to lead America, then panic when he proves he’s dangerously insane

They knew that about him when they nominated him. It’s too late to freak out about it now. They should have done that before they nominated him, not after.

Republicans have shifted into a much higher state of Red Alert because Trump’s erratic antics are revealing just how reckless their decision to nominate him really was, and how reckless their continued support for him really is. In other words, Trump is now threatening to damage the party in far worse ways than Republicans had bargained for, because he’s revealing in inescapably clear terms the real character and qualifications of the person they knowingly nominated to run the country and continue to support for the presidency.

All that was plenty obvious enough before the convention. He’s a terrible human being; he’s not subtle about it.

Trump’s pathologically abusive tendencies, his hair-trigger overreaction to criticism and slights both real and imagined, and his mental habit of sorting the world into the strong and the weak — the dominant and the submissive — render him temperamentally unfit for the presidency. He lacks basic knowledge of the world and doesn’t appear burdened by any curiosity about the complexities of foreign affairs or domestic policy. He is at worst a genuine bigot and at best a charlatan who has actively sought to stoke reactionary hostility to culturally and demographically evolving America. He is indifferent to the inner workings of the American system and instead promises authoritarian glory.

…

What’s really happened in recent days is that Trump’s ongoing battle with the Khan family only made all of these traits — the unhinged response to criticism, the bigoted attacks on Muslims, the naked abusiveness directed at a grieving family — more glaringly obvious. By extension, this has made nominating this man even more impossible politically for Republicans to defend. But Republicans knew who they were nominating. They themselves had repeatedly acknowledged that his personal traits were alarming and had castigated many of his positions as cruel and at odds with fundamental American values. Voices from all across the political spectrum, from liberals to centrists to Never Trump conservatives, warned that he would only get worse.

Now Republicans want to stage an intervention?

My point exactly.

Republicans are reacting with shock and horror to the sudden news that their candidate for the presidency is none other than real estate tycoon and “reality” tv star Donald Trump.

The Republican Party was in turmoil again Wednesday as party leaders, strategists and donors voiced increasing alarm about the flailing state of Donald Trump’s candidacy and fears that the presidential nominee was damaging the party with an extraordinary week of self-inflicted mistakes, gratuitous attacks and missed opportunities.

Well stone the crows! It turns out the candidate is not a responsible competent grown up who knows how to behave, but instead, it’s real estate tycoon and “reality” tv star Donald Trump.

Trump’s top campaign advisers are failing to instill discipline on their candidate, who has spent the past days lunging from one controversy to another while seemingly skipping chances to go on the offensive against his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

How could the Republicans possibly have known this would happen? What hint was there beforehand?

Reed, who managed Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, recommended that Trump “stop doing silly interviews nine times a day that get you off message” and deliver a major address seeking to reset the campaign establishing himself as the change candidate.

If only the Republicans had nominated a candidate who wouldn’t want to do silly interviews nine times a day – but alas for them, they didn’t, they nominated real estate tycoon and “reality” tv star Donald Trump.

Friends and allies of Manafort disputed reports that the top adviser had given up on Trump, describing him as fully committed to waging a successful campaign. But they said Manafort has been frustrated by Trump’s apparent lack of discipline on the stump and in his many media interviews.

But Manafort, being Trump’s campaign manager, must have known this all along, unlike the innocent Republicans who had no idea what he was like until just a day or two ago. Manafort must be well familiar with Trump’s lack of discipline and microscopic attention span.

“Paul has good influence with Donald,” said Charlie Black, a longtime GOP strategist and former business partner of Manafort. “But he’s Donald and he’s going to operate stream of consciousness a lot of times. You just hope he’ll have more days on message than days on consciousness.”

You just hope he’ll have more days when he doesn’t freak out and launch the nukes than days when he does.

From Washington to state capitals around the country, a feeling of despair and despondence fell over the Republican establishment. Two weeks ago at the party’s national convention in Cleveland, GOP leaders were buoyed by what they saw in Trump. But Trump quickly reverted to his old ways, setting off alarm bells in some parts of the party.

They were “buoyed” by that? By that orgy of fascism and egomania?

I hope the alarm bells burst their fucking eardrums.

Gingrich said Trump is continuing to operate on instincts that helped him in business and in the primaries but said the GOP nominee doesn’t realize those skills are not adequate for a general election.

Of course he doesn’t. He’s not bright. He doesn’t think.

“He can’t learn what he doesn’t know because he doesn’t know he doesn’t know it,” Gingrich said.

So he’ll be a fabulous president then. I don’t see what could possibly go wrong.

This has been going around since yesterday when Trump got peevish about a crying baby at one of his appearances.

Obama’s a baby-whisperer. Trump not so much.

Yesterday Obama pointed out that Trump is unfit to be president.

Speaking in the East Room of the White House while Mr. Trump rallied supporters in a nearby Virginia suburb, the president noted the Republican criticism of Mr. Trump for his attacks on the Muslim parents of an American soldier, Capt. Humayun Khan, who died in Iraq.

But Mr. Obama said the political recriminations from Republicans “ring hollow” if the party’s leaders continue to support Mr. Trump’s campaign.

“The question they have to ask themselves is: If you are repeatedly having to say in very strong terms that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him?” Mr. Obama said. “What does this say about your party that this is your standard-bearer?”

The thing about Trump is that it’s not just his views or his policies (if he actually has anything that can really be called a policy) – it’s his nature, his character, his way of being. It’s how horrible he is in every visible way.

Has anyone come forward to say anything like, “Look, I know Trump seems rude and abrasive in public but behind the scenes he’s actually a warm, caring, decent guy”? Not that I know of. As far as I can tell what you see is exactly what you get – a rude, abrasive, belligerent asshole.

Mr. Obama lamented what he called an attack on a “Gold Star family that had made such extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country.” He said he did not doubt that Republicans were outraged about the statements Mr. Trump and his supporters had made about the Khan family in the last several days.

“But there has to come a point at which you say somebody who makes those kinds of statements doesn’t have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding, to occupy the most powerful position in the world,” Mr. Obama said.

The president did not limit his criticism to Mr. Trump’s treatment of the Khan family. Mr. Obama said the Republican nominee had repeatedly demonstrated that he was “woefully unprepared to do this job.” The president said Mr. Trump had proved he lacked knowledge about Europe, the Middle East and other parts of Asia.

“This isn’t a situation where you have an episodic gaffe. This is daily,” Mr. Obama added. “There has to be a point at which you say, ‘This is not somebody I can support for president of the United States, even if he purports to be a member of my party.’ The fact that that has not yet happened makes some of these denunciations ring hollow.”

As hollow as Trump himself.