This week, as American Olympians made history and shattered records, Donald Trump continued setting his own record for most unstable, unqualified and dangerous presidential candidate in our country's history. An overshadowed and aggrieved Trump, who sees a very different America than the one making most Olympics-watching Americans proud, has achieved something truly remarkable: He has become unsatirizable, since his every utterance is already a punch line. He is the "you can't make this stuff up" candidate. This time, on Tuesday, he was wink-winking at the idea of, yes, presidential assassination, implying that if Hillary Clinton were elected, nothing could stop her from appointing judges, except, maybe, "Second Amendment people." The Secret Service confirmed that it had "more than one conversation" with the Trump campaign about the comments. Trump then denied it in a tweet, implying that those protecting him round the clock are lying. Then, on Wednesday, he claimed that President Obama and Clinton were the "founder" and "co-founder," respectively, of ISIS. And while more and more Republicans are choosing to maintain their credibility and integrity by jumping off the Trump Train to the Bottom, others like Paul Ryan continue to support Trump and, by extension, what he stands for. On the HuffPost front, I announced that I'll soon be leaving HuffPost to launch my new venture Thrive Global, which will be helping individuals and companies reduce stress and burnout and improve their health and productivity. I've long been passionate about doing everything I can to change the way we work and live, and now I'm putting that into action! And there is a real connection between leadership and the principles of Thrive, as FDR demonstrated in 1940. When he was confronted with the difficult decision of the U.S. entering the war at a time when the public was solidly against it, he took 10 days off, sailing around the Caribbean on a navy ship to think through this monumental question. The result was his idea for the crucial Lend-Lease program. As Roosevelt's speechwriter Robert Sherwood put it, "One can only say that FDR, a creative artist in politics, had put in his time on this cruise evolving the pattern of a masterpiece." Trump, at the extreme other end of the spectrum, demonstrates the opposite: that the more burned-out and sleep-deprived he is from his manic shambles of a campaign, the more unhinged he becomes and the more idiotic his decisions and pronouncements. And that's exactly what science tells us will happen. On Thursday, Trump said of his campaign's prospects: "at the end, it's either going to work or I'm going to, you know -- I'm going to have a very, very nice long vacation." Here's hoping he gets that nice long vacation -- not only for the sake of his country, but for his own sake.
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This week, as American Olympians made history and shattered records, Donald Trump continued setting his own record for most unstable, unqualified and dangerous presidential candidate in our country's history. An overshadowed and aggrieved Trump, who sees a very different America than the one making most Olympics-watching Americans proud, has achieved something truly remarkable: He has become unsatirizable, since his every utterance is already a punch line. He is the "you can't make this stuff up" candidate. This time, on Tuesday, he was wink-winking at the idea of, yes, presidential assassination, implying that if Hillary Clinton were elected, nothing could stop her from appointing judges, except, maybe, "Second Amendment people." The Secret Service confirmed that it had "more than one conversation" with the Trump campaign about the comments. Trump then denied it in a tweet, implying that those protecting him round the clock are lying. Then, on Wednesday, he claimed that President Obama and Clinton were the "founder" and "co-founder," respectively, of ISIS. And while more and more Republicans are choosing to maintain their credibility and integrity by jumping off the Trump Train to the Bottom, others like Paul Ryan continue to support Trump and, by extension, what he stands for. On the HuffPost front, I announced that I'll soon be leaving HuffPost to launch my new venture Thrive Global, which will be helping individuals and companies reduce stress and burnout and improve their health and productivity. I've long been passionate about doing everything I can to change the way we work and live, and now I'm putting that into action! And there is a real connection between leadership and the principles of Thrive, as FDR demonstrated in 1940. When he was confronted with the difficult decision of the U.S. entering the war at a time when the public was solidly against it, he took 10 days off, sailing around the Caribbean on a navy ship to think through this monumental question. The result was his idea for the crucial Lend-Lease program. As Roosevelt's speechwriter Robert Sherwood put it, "One can only say that FDR, a creative artist in politics, had put in his time on this cruise evolving the pattern of a masterpiece." Trump, at the extreme other end of the spectrum, demonstrates the opposite: that the more burned-out and sleep-deprived he is from his manic shambles of a campaign, the more unhinged he becomes and the more idiotic his decisions and pronouncements. And that's exactly what science tells us will happen. On Thursday, Trump said of his campaign's prospects: "at the end, it's either going to work or I'm going to, you know -- I'm going to have a very, very nice long vacation." Here's hoping he gets that nice long vacation -- not only for the sake of his country, but for his own sake.

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