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The "Weekend at Bernie's" Presidency
How long can this “Weekend at Bernie’s” presidency go on?
Trump fever is finally breaking on Capitol Hill, this time for real. What in God’s name happens now?
By Brian Karem
White House columnist
Published June 26, 2026 9:00AM (EDT)
(Salon) With Donald Trump‘s refusal to sign a bipartisan housing bill that Republicans hoped might save them from doom in the upcoming midterms, even GOP members of Congress are now openly viewing the president with anger and derision. Senate Majority Leader John Thune laughed out loud when asked about Trump’s abrupt cancellation of the planned White House signing ceremony.
Other House Republicans weren’t as nice. “It’s a f**ing s**t show, isn’t it?” one member told me. “It’s always about him. That’s his only idea. He’s nuts.”
....(snip)....
He still wants to be the king, and of course he loves the limelight. Some members of Congress think Trump is just stalling on the bipartisan housing bill for dramatic effect, so he can take a big bow for signing it a few days down the line. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., appearing on MSNBC, said she had no idea what was going on with Trump. “You got the wrong person” if you want to get inside the president’s head, she said. I know very few who want to do that, but a great many who think that Trump’s claim of a new American ”golden age” is “pure horses**t.”
....(snip)....
I know for sure that Trump fever is breaking because several prominent figures in the GOP are now considering their options — at least in private or among close friends — when the day finally comes that the 80-year-old president is no longer around.
“Some of us are wondering if it will be sooner than later,” a junior member of Congress said. Some folks, including a few inside Trump’s administration, have started to refer to the whole enterprise as “Weekend at Bernie’s” — referring to the legendary 1989 comedy in which two aides try to pass off their dead boss as alive.
....(snip)....
Trump loves to claim that our country is the hottest on the planet. It was dead before he came along, according to his standard stump speech. But make no mistake — it’s Trumpism that’s now dead. The heat we’re all feeling is from climate change, and being too close to the flames of perdition. We live in a country run by divisive politicians and an incoherent media, and full of people who are increasingly confused and overwhelmed. But if and when Trump finally leaves office, the possibilities for solving the problems he’s created will expand exponentially. ..................(more)
https://www.salon.com/2026/06/26/how-long-can-this-weekend-at-bernies-presidency-go-on/
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
But he is a chatbot. We know that.
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/29/the-hallucinating-chatgpt-presidency/
Judge for yourself.
Tue, Apr 29th 2025 09:34am - Mike Masnick
We generally understand how LLM hallucinations work. An AI model tries to generate what seems like a plausible response to whatever you ask it, drawing on its training data to construct something that sounds right. The actual truth of the response is, at best, a secondary consideration.
snip
But over the last few months, it has occurred to me that, for all the hype about generative AI systems “hallucinating,” we pay much less attention to the fact that the current President does the same thing, nearly every day. The more you look at the way Donald Trump spews utter nonsense answers to questions, the more you begin to recognize a clear pattern — he answers questions in a manner quite similar to early versions of ChatGPT. The facts don’t matter, the language choices are a mess, but they are all designed to present a plausible-sounding answer to the question, based on no actual knowledge, nor any concern for whether or not the underlying facts are accurate.
snip
This is not the response of someone working from actual knowledge or policy understanding. Instead, it’s precisely how an LLM operates: taking a prompt (the question about job losses) and generating text based on some core parameters (the “system prompt” that requires deflecting blame and asserting greatness).
The hallmarks of AI generation are all here:
• Confident assertions without factual backing
• Meandering diversions that maintain loose semantic connection to the topic
• Pattern-matching to previous responses (“ripped off,” “billions of dollars”)
• Optimization for what sounds good rather than what’s true
snip
But over the last few months, it has occurred to me that, for all the hype about generative AI systems “hallucinating,” we pay much less attention to the fact that the current President does the same thing, nearly every day. The more you look at the way Donald Trump spews utter nonsense answers to questions, the more you begin to recognize a clear pattern — he answers questions in a manner quite similar to early versions of ChatGPT. The facts don’t matter, the language choices are a mess, but they are all designed to present a plausible-sounding answer to the question, based on no actual knowledge, nor any concern for whether or not the underlying facts are accurate.
snip
This is not the response of someone working from actual knowledge or policy understanding. Instead, it’s precisely how an LLM operates: taking a prompt (the question about job losses) and generating text based on some core parameters (the “system prompt” that requires deflecting blame and asserting greatness).
The hallmarks of AI generation are all here:
• Confident assertions without factual backing
• Meandering diversions that maintain loose semantic connection to the topic
• Pattern-matching to previous responses (“ripped off,” “billions of dollars”)
• Optimization for what sounds good rather than what’s true
