"Slipping" if you want to put it mildly, but why.
In his tweet on a day when Puerto Rico faced yet another potentially devastating hurricane, he said that Puerto Rico one of the most corrupt places on earth.
Look who is talking about corruption...and not even skipping a beat selling his Doral Golf Resort for the next G7 summit (emoluments clause) anyone...
His administration is the most corrupt and rigged in our life time, just listing all "the best people" who left disgraced or got fired under pressure of allegations some are already serving their well deserved prison sentences.
Elizabeth Warren called it for what it is: "Revolving Door Corruption"
Really, having this kind of "Stable Genius" for what seems like an eternity in a Oval Office, don't you think at this point it's a grave National Security concern.
"Do what you need to do," he said "I will Pardon you!"
Individual1 tells his aids to break the law.
So many daily lies to digest, you will need much more space for this, plus WAPO never stops counting for us...
President Trump has made 12,019 false or misleading claims over 928 days.
Megalomania is a mental decease as is Grandiose Delusions... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandiose_delusions
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalomania_(disambiguation)
All the president's lies...
Hey GOP are you conveniently afflicted by deafness!
45
Trump is a gum ball machine of disconnected thoughts. Put an idea in his head and something stupid rolls out. Exactly like dementia patients I have meet. Kids and adults with their intelligence say the oddest things.
How long can the Senate whistle by the graveyard?
44
But high up on the mountain
When the wind is hitting it
If you're watching very closely
The rock slips a little bit
16
I gently wrote this comment after he
beat Hillary in the d Electoral College, as I recall
before midnight with at least 270 dingbats (apology to Archie Bunker for stealing his insult of
Edith)
‘The worse thing that ever happened’ was/is
the only hyperbole I think appropriate
13
"Too bad he wasn’t creative enough to tell the world that the Chinese and Trump had become so close they could exchange thoughts without having to pick up the telephone." - the latest quantum theories suggest that the Jairmeister and the Donster actually share the same brain neurons and can simultaneously be each other's cause and effect
9
G7 next year in south Florida during hurricane season?! Just trying to make a buck, eh Donald?
33
It's the cumulative effects of hairspray poisoning. mad hatter mad.
40
How fitting would it be if Hurricane Dorian makes landfall on Mar-a-Lago? Would this be Obama's fault, or should we blame the fake news?
36
I see no difference of Trump's mental state and the mental state of numerous other dictators who were drunk with power. A few that come to mind: Hitler, Stalin, , Kim Jung Un, Nixon, and Saddam Hussein . All saw no reason to conform to the truth in giving speeches. The question is who will put limits on them?
35
Talk about the madness of King George...
20
ome on people, the man is, plain and simple, a liar. He lies so often, and so outrageously , he is to be pitied. A hollow shell of a person.
18
Yes, he is a raving lunatic. It would be fitting for his Florida property to be destroyed with this hurricane in payment for his reckless deregulation of noxious emissions, as well as not be able to further abuse the emoluments clause in the Constitution. Vote blue to save our democratic republic.
35
As they drag him off in a straight jacket for his much needed shock treatements:
His equally diminished followers will be chanting "fake news"
"lock her up"
Let's just pray he has a stroke or gets pancreatic cancer!
A sign there really is a higher power.
17
The only thing The Chosen One will win is a long term in the slammer.
21
I think that it's me who has changed, not Trump. Trump was always what he is (a very talented con artist, a spoiled brat, a completely uneducated person, a money-obsessed lover of capitalism, a mafia boss, a racist and misogynist and homophobe, a rare psychiatric case which is well beyond narcissism into sociopathic lack of caring about other people's feelings and thoughts, a person who is shallow and empty inside, a monolingual butcher of the English language, etc., etc.). But it took me all of this time to see all of that. I had to learn a lot. So I can't answer your question objectively if he has changed. it seems that I now have a full perceptual and interpretive framework for seeing the nightmare in front of my eyes.
20
Trump is incoherently wonderful! A large segment of his fan base does not know what the word incoherent means, not to disparage them.
Seriously, though, there is some kind of art to being able to disagree with yourself all the time. Trump, of course, has had a lifetime of practice, telling everyone whatever he decides to do, if he does it, will be the greatest anyone has ever seen, something people can't believe it is so great.
I remember back when he took over the Eastern Airlines Shuttle between NY, DC and Boston. He was asked his plans: "To run it like a diamond," he replied. What did that mean? Incoherence as a lifestyle. A diamond will not get you very far in the air; last time I checked, it just sparkles and sits there, waiting for an excuse to be noticed.
The Shuttle was unloaded quietly and unceremoniously a year later, Eastern Airlines having stuck the Donald with two old, ready to retire aircraft when he kept demanding a better deal. He got a worse deal. Surprised? This guy makes idiots look bad.
Ah, the Plaza Hotel. He spent hundreds of thousands taking out newspaper ads to say he knew he paid too much but, darn, he had to have it. A crown jewel! Trump's magical touch in business didn't work then, either. The hotel was offloaded in a prepackaged bankruptcy. Maybe paying too much wasn't such a good idea?
Trump never fit into the presidency nor it to him, now it's slip slidin' away. Why does the news media even bother reporting his misstatements and lies?
23
I think that trump is seriously mentally ill; I don't know about dementia. I believe that he is a malignant narcissist, a pathological liar, and a sociopath; perhaps even a psychopath. He is cruel, sadistic, mercurial, incompetent, deceitful, arrogant, and has no boundaries. I also believe that he is probably feeling very pressured, very inadequate, and very overwhelmed, as he is unfit for the presidency, and doesn't know what he is doing, other than to try and fill his own pockets, and those of big shot republicans, and his republican henchmen. I think when someone as insecure as trump is becomes panicked, they make up for it by being even more bombastic, even more arrogant, and bragging even more about their non-existent achievements and abilities, to cover their insecurity. Of course, when one is panicked, one's mind tends towards wandering, confusion, hysteria...which may account for trump's malapropisms and forgetfulness. And, yet, it may be dementia. I have long opined that he is also bi-polar. Some characteristics of bi-polar disease (especially in the manic phase) are impulsiveness, promiscuity, bombast, pomposity, lack of need for sleep, poor judgment, feeling invincible, and they can be very irresponsible with finances. This is a very dangerous man, with cross-over psychiatric disorders, and yet it seems we have no way of removing him from the highest office in our land because the republicans are all corrupt and in league with him. He facilitates their Fascism.
28
Gail, you and all of us know you can't fix crazy.
Or explain it, either!
10
‘My father is German’ - I have 2 hypotheses for this statement. This statement may be the truth if 1) his father is Friedrich, his grandfather or 2) Fredrick’s mother was sent to Germany to give birth to him. Upon their return, Fredrick’s was falsified to reflect a Bronx birth. This would explain his insisting on seeing Obama birth certificate & claiming Obama was born in Kenya.
10
The Man Who Couldn’t Take It Anymore
“I had no choice but to leave,” General James Mattis says of his decision to resign as President Trump’s secretary of defense.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/10/james-mattis-trump/596665/
I know we can't take it anymore!!!
14
okay, he's daft as a brush. what excuse is there for the rest of the so-called republican party?
26
I think Trump's internal polling is showing him lose the election and he is flailing around a little bit trying to find something that sticks with the base. Unfortunately, I thnk the schtick is getting a little stale and does not get people as riled up as it used to. But I think he is totally sane. If you can stand to, watch one of his complete speeches. He is quite with it.
2
The world leaders wouldn't talk to him so out of desparation trump went out and talked to the media that he hates with a passion.
Got it.
11
But what difference will it make to his voters? That's the question. After all, we're only talking here about a relatively small perception of deterioration since Day One, and we're long past trying to make sense of why people vote for him regardless.
His rural voters' grandparents would have tarred and feathered and ridden out of town a person of Trump's character who showed up and tried his games.
Even today, knowing what they know, they'd be alarmed if their attractive twenty-something daughter said she'd met Trump and he'd asked her to spend the weekend at Mar-a-Lago because he was interested in furthering her career.
Similarly, if their plumbing contractor son said Trump had invited him to bid on a hotel construction contract, they'd advise him strongly not to do it.
Yet they trust him to run their country and defend him.
20
In this case, perception is reality just ask the Leaders of the G6 @$*&)(***, one.
1
He has no second thoughts...he has lots of thurd thoughts.
9
Do any of us really think, or believe, that an election is going to make all this BS go away, if Trump loses?
Our world has changed, especially in this country, because of Donald Trump and his mindless minions and selfish, hateful people. Climate change, poverty, immigration, etc., etc.
The haters and the malcontents aren’t going to go away overnight.
We’ve got a long road to travel if we want to save this country.
Do we have it in us to make this a safe and good place to live?
Time will tell.
Read your history, and you decide.
13
Trump’s genius and success is noticing how incredibly stupid the American people truly are. Anyone whose bottom line required thought and actual data spit on Trump decades ago. None of his nonsensical statements of wealth could snowball the NFL or people who actually needed a real accounting of his BS. The unfortunate thing for Americans is they are losing a lot while he dithers into another fantasy world.
Farmers are now welfare queens.
Russia is now the friend of the GOP.
Our nuclear weapons are now considered a plausible defense to a hurricane.
Dismembering journalists is fine as long as we can sell the butchers guns. (I still don’t understand how that does not scare the pants off the Roberts Court....first they came for the...)
We are fighting with Denmark!
He’s not losing it - the American people are!
27
I'm in quite a quandary. I'm uncertain whether to call Trump a reflex liar, because to lie, you have to mentally acknowledge the truth and make a representation at odds with what's in your mind. I suspect that Trump long ago stopped wasting mental energy on perceiving what is true and what is false; he has reached maximal efficiency, devoting all his mental energy to perceiving what utterance would serve the needs of the moment. I would imagine that he long ago degenerated from being a liar to being a bullshitter.
19
I can't resist asking how far Trump can slip, given where he started, down near the lowest point in human manners and lack of dignity and respect for the office he holds.
9
The 42% who support him should be embarrassed.
Politics aside, Trump is obviously the least competent President in American history.
We should have an amendment to the constitution requiring that an incoming President must be less than 70 years of age before inaugeration.
9
Thanks, Gail, as usual.
I'm laughing - but it hurts.
5
Thank you. Reading your text made me forget for a while how worry I am about this man.
1
Trump complained he’d already lost “from $3 to 5 billion” by being president. And if you believe that one, Trump has plenty more lies to spout.
“I did a lot of great jobs and great deals that I don’t do anymore,” he said. “I don’t want to do them because the deals I’m making are great deals for the country, and that’s to me, much more important.”
Can anyone point out what "great deals" Trump is doing for the country? How many times has Trump gone into bankruptcy, leaving third-party vendors holding an empty bag? Other than marketing his own name, Trump has been a total deal-making business failure.
14
The truly insane people are the people in the Administration covering for Trump. They seem to conveniently forget that they were not elected President. They seem to conveniently forget that the 25th Amendment doesn't have a fallback clause that allows them to "pitch in" for the President, to "run interference" for the President.
The truly insane people are the Republicans in the Senate who will not impeach. Where is the sanity of putting party before country, if there's a good chance there might be no country left to govern?
The truly insane people are those who don't understand that we in the United States are effectively in 1930s Germany. The truly insane people do understand that we in the United States are effectively in 1930s Germany, but deny it.
The issue is not Trump's sanity or insanity. The issue is the insane behavior of the rest of us. But then, we're effectively doing nothing about climate change either. In light of our collective insanity, does it matter if we have one more nut job, who just happens to be President?
9
Although it's a matter of concern that Trump is having second thoughts, my question is whether he has any first thoughts. He seems incapable of thinking at all.
8
How could consideration of Trump's Doral Uber Alles plan for the G7 in August 2020 not have noted that in August the humidity in the Miami area hovers around 110%, which in itself should disqualify Doral. Think the Carmel area here in California for great weather and a population ready to give Trump the appropriate level of adulation.
However, you might think that Trump is looking forward, wherever the G7 convenes, to look very presidential leading up to the election.
A bonus factoid about Trump's father's place of birth. Yes, he wasn't born in Germany. That was Fred's dad's birthplace, but for decades the Trumps claimed they weren't even German. They were "Swedish" something Trump Fils repeated in his Art of the Deal. Why did the family get this wrong? Because they were worried that any hint of the Teutonic would alienate NY city's jewish population, a target market for Fred's apartments. Whenever Trump does his Pochohantas number, remember it was his family that lied about its ethnicity to gain an advantage.
16
Oh, if only Donald would slip up and accidentally say something pro-choice. I bet Republicans would then suddenly scream for the 25th amendment.
8
Say what you want. Trump has paid off enough of the electors that he will continue to be president. On the next round he is going to get rid of our entire government. He will announce that not only is he the chosen one, but that he’s either a dictator or a king. It’s despicable that the few remaining moral elements of the GOP quietly resign rather than challenge him, or better yet, just remove him.
3
I've watched with amusement over the last year as various entities have tried to make the case that trump's mental acuity has been deteriorating over the last couple of years (including the Mooch's about face or "epiphany").
But those of us who grew up in the NYC vicinity have long been aware of who he is: A carnival barker, con man, corrupt business man (amusing that he accuses Puerto Rico pols of being "corrupt"), a self-absorbed narcissist, a misogynist, insecure, and not the sharpest knife in the drawer by a long shot. He's not changed a bit.
What has changed over the last year is that he's been bolder and less concerned about showing his true self. He's also gotten rid of all the "adults in the room" and replaced them with sycophants.
15
@J Darby
Forgot to add, I see the examples in the article and the Gartner link as being possibly explainable by something other than "dementia". He's likely overwhelmed, not in his NYC element (shady real estate underworld in which he controlled the levers), mentally & physically fatigued, and it doesn't sound like he gets much sleep.
3
Remember: Trump's fans like him BECAUSE he acts crazy, whether he's clinically diagnosed as such or not. Some of the comments here confirm that.
11
I believe Trump when he says he never has second thoughts; second thoughts are preceded by first thoughts. He appears to be incapable of formulating any thoughts beyond his narrow little-minded brain. I actually have more disdain for his able-minded enablers in the GOP and Congress.
Patriots of good will need to speak out. Mathis, Tillerson, Kelly, kasich, Corker, Colin Powell, you know who you are! Come to the aid of our country; time is of the essence.
4
And don't forget the one where he said he missed the climate change meeting because he was meeting with the leaders of Germany and India...both of whom were at the climate change meeting. So there goes that one. He is deranged and he's getting worse and he will continue to get worse. Count on it.
11
Definitely slipping, cognitively, with his pre-existing mental illness(es)/conditions extra baked-in with aging and thus accentuated.
The 'slippage' I can attest to personally, as I have seen it in myself and all around my friends and peers age cohort -- those between 65-80 -- to varying degrees.
On that basis alone, I know neither I nor any of my dear good lifelong friends (and good people) should be President or in charge of the nuclear 'go' command. It's just common sense.
As to the mental illness ... I mean, c'mon, this guy has been pretending to be'John Barron' (and David Denison) for so long now, decades and decades now ... how is that remotely 'normal?'
It's not.
It's weird at best, and sociopathic at worst.
This is perhaps the most troubling ... this much about him was well known and documented before the election. How did that part -- the pretending, in real-life and real time, for extended periods of time, to be person entirely made out of HIS imagination -- how that that aspect of 'stable genius' make it to Oval Office?!?!
This ALL needs a remedy. It can be as simple as making the right, the conscious and the sentient choice in Nov. 2020: anyone but Trump.
1
Gail, I got the real fake story from the White House - direct. Trump has several interior voices telling him stuff. One such voice told him that Kim had met Melania and they got along like gangbusters. In fact he complimented her on her designer dress, he called it "charming." Another voice told him Xi and his various underlings pleaded with him while he was at G7 to re-open trade negotiations, they said they were going to make him a great deal.
Its all good, no worries, he's not our mad king Donald...the bed bugs in Doral are worried they might not be able to keep up with the next G7 crowd, they are bringing in multilingual brethren from other countries. They just don't want Donald to nuke them...
3
He reminds me very much of the Emperor Who Wore No Clothes. The Republican Party are the members of the kingdom who lined the streets and extolled the beauty of the Emperor's outfit. This is not going to end until somebody has the nerve to say "he's naked!"
4
To achieve maximum hyperbole, the Supreme Liar has to pad this week's Complaint of Greatness from.. not just $3 billion "lost deals", but could be $5 billion.
PLEASE! Someone curry favor with the King,
"With all certitude, my liege, it is closer to $5 billion if it's a tuppence! Give thy royal nod. Grace your subjects with divine tweet. What debt is owed?"
We must know, NOW, how much? Donald Trump will go on-and-on about being owed. Ask him again, and again, and again, until he is out-of-office.
The People don't need a reason to demand his answer, but the People have no shortage of reasons.
1
This is just a terrible shame. It would appear that Trump and all the baggage that name implies has overwhelmed even the prodigious comedic talent of Ms. Collins.
Interesting, he was flat broke before.
It's very risky to paint trump as mentally unfit. Such tactics may come back and bite us.
My hope is that after he leaves office (and is a private citizen), he will be prosecuted for his numerous: Crimes Against Humanity, Obstruction Of Justice, criminal emoluments favors, etc.
I hope the media's portrayals (and his own intentional "crazy talk") does not permit him an "insanity" or "I didn't know what I was doing" defense... thus setting this crook free.
Justice requires trump to go to jail!
292
Mental deterioration or just Trump as usual?
The question's degree of difficulty is akin to "Is Trump a racist or not?" A better question is why are we still searching for evidence of foregone conclusion?
165
No matter what people say about him, Trump is still going to win again in 2020.
42
@Nate Most indicators suggest that that's unlikely.
89
@Nate
Nope. Bernie Sanders will take it, hands down.
27
@Nate
As a dictator, he probably has figured out how to win again, no matter what the majority of voters want. And of course, the GOP's gerrymandering and voter suppression, and maybe even the fellow dictator in Russia, will have something to do with it, too. We've lost our republic.
132
So, Trump has already lost 3-5 billion as president, he best not run for re-election, he'll be flat broke half way through his second term.
9
Seems the right moment to share a conversation with my Trumpeteer friend during the GOP early primary season. He asked for my pick and I responded with John Kasich, middle of the road seasoned politician with little or no ego. My negative comments about Trump led to the question, why are so down on him?
My answer: I consider him to be a national embarrassment. I could now add national tragedy.
19
@texsun
Interesting that GOP has moved so far right that Kasich looks middle of the road!
7
I am a retired social service type person who at one time ran four federal grants aimed at identifying at-risk seniors on a community level. I set up hotlines and tiplines. Whenever I received a call about an at-risk senior, I went out and paid a visit, very non-threatening and kind; just to have a conversation and see how coherent they seemed and if they were eating, getting meds, keeping clean and warm. I instigated more than one conservatorship. I found a former librarian living in a greenhouse who hadn't bathed in 3 years. She was coherent, just poor. I hooked her up with a church group. If I had received a call on Trump, I would likely evaluate him as unstable, belligerent, potentially violent if confronted, poorly nourished and obese, likely undiagnosed diabetic and/or with a significant organic mental disorder.
39
"Deteriorata," a parody song from The Nat'l Lampoon album ""Radio Dinner" ends with … "The world continues to deteriorate … Give up!"
And the world might. And some might be ready to say we might as well.
But, contrary to Ms. Collins's idea at the end of her column, trump cannot continue to deteriorate any more than the 'achieved infinity' of his deterioration can grow or expand.
3
I don't know his full history, so I can't discern whether his mental processes are deteriorating or whether he simply failed to mature. Whatever the case, his actions and statements makes one believe he is incompetent as the Chief Executive of the U.S. and can great harm to the welfare of the American people.
I just watched a C-Span live ceremony on the lawn of the White House in which he announced the creation of the U.S. Space Command and named the new Commander.
All this went along smoothly but he ad libbed that this was the new military warfighting area. Obviously ignoring the existing space treaty for the purpose of using space for peaceful purposes. I am beginning to wonder how well these initiatives are staffed and discussed by the elected representatives of our democracy.
Clearly, it is not in our interest to militarize space, I believe space is an ideal place for international cooperation and development, it can be used for Geographic Positioning, Navigation, Communications and probably the best way to eventually provide high-speed internet. I also am pretty certain that beamed solar energy from satellites in orbit are a future way to gently adapt our way of life to non-fossil energy as some new President and new Congress joins the World in trying to avoid the catastrophic consequences of global warming -- Trumps biggest mental blind spot.
He doesn't write his own speeches but he gives the impression that he doesn't read them prior to giving them.
13
I watched a little too. When he reads it is poorly done. When he goes off script , it’s not quite gibberish, but very close to it.
6
Several of the male candidates are showing signs of decline, but trump by far leads the pack. He is the Mack Daddy of Dementia!
11
Madder than a hatter, dear Gail, madder than a hatter.
12
431 DAYS 08 HOURS 04 MINUTES
left to 20/20.
Can we Survive???
12
It’s the Peter Principle. Rise to the level of your own incompetence.
7
Melanie is not allowed to disagree with the Donald. Clean up crew is dismissed.
2
Maybe we need to get rid of Trump the way Trump himself gets rid of "inconvenient" people--by buying them out. Why don't the American people just pony up money to pay the Trump sycophants to stop mindlessly supporting him and just go away?
Or, better yet, we can pay them to turn on him...
10
Fair or not, I'm saying it: Mental deterioration is Trump as usual.
10
There is no pilot in this airplane...The US is a potential train wreck and all the world are looking and expecting the end of the story in the next months by some economic disasters and/or stupid commercial or real wars.
13
We can call him a failure, but as any GOP president would have done, he got 2 appointees to the Supreme Court, and that's good enough for the faithful to overlook the dumpster fire.
8
@Jon
Thanks to Moscow Mitch
3
Had an elderly relative with diagnosed early stage dementia.
As we all sat in a restaurant that overlooked a small intermountain-west lake, 300 miles from the Pacific, he suddenly said; 'You can catch an ocean steamer right there, across the river, and sail all the way to Paris.'
He was dead serious and believed every word.
This is where we are with Trump.
18
@Chris Morris
I might add that Trump may be further into the mid-stage as many statements he utters are not connected to reality, whereas my relative would be cogent/lucid for days or weeks between episodes.
6
And it’s true we are amused
When fact is fiction and TV’s reality
— Bono
5
It's long past time to call the "men in the white coats."
10
It’s mental deterioration, starting from a bar that is low to begin with.
11
«Quod natura non dat, Salmantica non præstat» (In English What nature does not give, Salamanca does not lend) it is a Latin proverb that means that a university can not give anyone what nature denied. In this way, neither intelligence nor memory nor the capacity for learning are things that a university can offer its students.[1]
That summarizes what's happening since the beginning of this "presidency".
9
HIs motto never changes. "When you're president, they let you."
14
Trump's mental illness is on display seven day s a week.
But it's the confused mental state of his voters that we should be most concerned about. That so many millions are so mentally bifurcated that they could have voted for such an immoral huckster --- whether to "send a message" or secure tax breaks or protect values he obviously doesn't hold --- is deeply shocking.
Yes, Trump is crazy. But the culture of the United States is deathly ill. Laugh at the President. Lament. But he's here to say, in one form or another, until we have deep and lasting reforms that go beyond even Warren's "structural changes."
The place to start is with an examination of what The Rule of Law actually means. Only a handful in government today understand the concept -- especially as it applies to themselves.
Gerrymandering? Pork Barrels? Mass Shootings? A Senate Majority Leader with the powers of Louis XIV?
And they are just the tip of what used to be an iceberg, before lobbyists melted them down. So yes, Trump is crazy, but the USA is psychotic.
19
It is just amazing how all the right-wingers holding top jobs across the world, from Trump to Johnson to Bolsonaro to Modi, outdo one another in the campaign to be Loon of the Century. The worrying part is the number of voters who think that's what it takes.
5
We are not sure of Trump's mental capacity.
But Mitch McConnell doesn't have this excuse.
18
Well past time to invoke the 25th Amendment.
The only problem is that Trump’s cabinet (even with its ever-changing cast of characters) is the most corrupt in U.S. history.
Why would depose the very guy who enables them to self-enrich off the backs of the working class and honest taxpayers?!
Because it’s the right thing to do, especially if they care one iota about the country, social justice, the rule of law, and our democracy.
12
There needs to be an amendment to the US Constitution, where
a candidate for the presidency, a judge in the Supreme Court and
Senate need to pass a rigorous psychiatric evaluation , ethics and moral evaluation and an IQ test in order to be considered for the highest positions in the land. Showing your tax returns should be another very important requirement that would fall under the ethics and moral evaluation. Failing anyone of those tests would not qualify that person for the job. Otherwise, the country and the rest of the world would be at the mercy of mentally unstable psychopaths.
13
Trump is not burdened by competence, honesty, fairness or empathy.
Why would increasing mental health issues, be a concern?
17
Since Mrs Clinton is not running, Trump will have a tough time ginning up enough hate to win the election.
8
Everyone repeat after me" "TRUMP CAN'T BE TRUSTED".
It says everything about Trump people need to know and eliminated any attempts to diagnosis his state, or comment on his corruption and incompetence. EVERYONE understands the concept of trust and why he doesn't deserve any more from anyone.
The "Con From Queens" has emptied his "trust" account.
15
Give the president a break. Flying to Biarritz where he owns no golf course , was already seen by him as a giant waste of his time,so when he was reminded that next year he is hosting his own G7 ,he saw it as a sign that Providence had handed him a "fantastic deal". The Doral ,ideally situated at less than a 5 mn limo ride from Miami International airport , became the justification for putting up with this somewhat unpleasant reunion.
Let's cut some slack to president Trump: if you ever stayed at the Doral,particularly before he took it over, you gotta admit ,it is the ideal location to hold a G7, except.....not in August. Hurricane Andrew ripped the property apart back in 1992 I believe ,and the heat is close to unbearable at this time of the year.
However, a G7 meeting experiencing an actual hurricane event,might go a long way in motivating our leaders to implement concrete climate change policies without further delay.
14
@Marcelo Brito
LOL!
But “our leaders”?!
The world’s leaders know it’s time to act.
The Democrats know it’s time to act.
The Republicans, though, are in bed with Big Oil and Big Coal and will never capitulate.
As Upton Sinclair famously wrote:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/254630-i-candidate-for-governor-and-how-i-got-licked
2
When my grandfather was in his 90's and approaching the end of his life he (briefly?) thought I was one of his children rather than his grandchild. I said "Oh, but Grandpa, I'm L's daughter. L is your daughter and I am your grand-daughter." He looked puzzled for a moment, then a bit embarrassed, then laughed a little, and allowed as how his memory sometimes played tricks on him.
1
If he were ruling Hong Kong would they tolerate it? Probably not...
In contrast, in the US, there's hardly any visible protest.
15
I’m 71 years old and I’m waiting for the ‘adults in the room’ to please do something and make me less afraid.
37
If this is accurate, don’t be anywhere near him when it all starts to give way!
3
I had hoped that justice would prevail and that trump would end his tenure in the white house in an orange jumpsuit. While I doubt he would suffer any remorse being incarcerated, it would be a nightmare of discomfort and a horror for him to have to endure. Instead, it looks like trump will end up in a hospital gown wandering aimlessly around a chronic care facility in a hazy state of cognitive decline while being spoon fed vegetable puree which they tell him is chocolate cake from Mar-A-Lago. It's frustrating to think that this how Trump will probably get off the hook and end his days - never having to suffer any consequences or punishment for the massive amount of harm he's done...He will die as he lived, without any consequences.
31
You have inspired a new word: Strumu--StuffTrump makes up.
5
Say what you will, I don't think Trump is physically well.
He didn't look it at Biarritz, and he hasn't looked healthy since.
14
20 years ago, Donald Trump could speak in coherent sentences and string them together to make an argument. It would a wacko argument overall, but would be cohesive.
Now he cannot do that.
Nothing can be a better demonstration of his mental deterioration than that.
25
Sadly, I don't think he's crazy. I think he's shrewd and cunning and does what he thinks works for him. His ability to convince people that his personal gain aligns with their interests is unbelievable. I'm guessing that his supporters in Florida are thrilled at the prospect of him bringing a G7 summit there.
Personally, I would like to hear more about the failed businessman angle.
6
I've got a gripe. Its a touchy subject and it will probably alienate me from my professional cousins - psychiatrists. I used to joke with them that they and I were in the same business - seeing through people. They with their insights and me with my x-rays.
Known as the Goldwater Rule, The American Psychiatric Association came up with the following in 1973.
"... it unethical for a psychiatrist to render a professional opinion to the media about a public figure unless the psychiatrist has examined the person and has proper authorization to provide the statement." "Armchair psychiatry or the use of psychiatry as a political tool is the misuse of psychiatry and is unacceptable and unethical."
If there is any doubt that as Trump perceives his weaknesses and impending rejection that he will create great risks to this country? I have none.
I am not a psychiatrist. I am merely an observer. And what I see is alarming - with consequences that are well beyond the realm of imagination.
18
Trumps behavior, especially skipping out on G-7 climate change meetings, may also be drawing concern from the heavens. No sooner had he suggested his Doral country club for next years G-7 meeting than Hurricane Dorian appeared out of nowhere taking direct aim at it.
27
I try to laugh, but I can't shake the feeling that this must be like the humiliation of life in a country occupied by a hostile foreign power that mocks one's national traditions and ideals, weakens long standing institutions, installs its functionaries in the judiciary, despoils the nation's resources, enriches itself at the expense of the national treasury, and entrenches itself to prolong a hostile occupation as long as possible.
19
Deals that you passed up is not the same thing as money lost. If Trump done those deals, he would have lost money on them.
10
There are two movies which brilliantly predicted the situation we're in and I can't stop thinking about them:" Idiocracy "and "Dr Strangelove"
14
Trump is the first President to be elected in a full blown Social Media Narcissist Society. He uses it to full advantage against those on the Left who have perpetuated the daily Fake News (another sympton of SMNS) using Democratic Party Scripted verses everyday. By Tweeting DJT bypasses the Media and gets his message out.
The Hysteria and Collective Paranoia by those on the Left since Trumps Victory has a name and its called TDS. (Trump Derangement Syndrome)
From Psychology Today:
"Many clinicians, political commentators, and members of the public have speculated upon the mental health of President Donald Trump. Indeed, over 70,000 people self-identifying as "mental health professionals" have signed a petition declaring that "Trump is mentally ill and must be removed." In sociological terms, the "medical gaze" has been hitherto focused on President Trump, and to a lesser extent his ardent supporters.
However, in recent months, many have been questioning the direction of this "medical gaze." In fact, more and more people are suggesting that this "medical gaze" should be reversed and refocused on President Trump’s most embittered and partisan opponents. Some have even suggested that these opponents are experiencing a specific mental condition—a condition which has been labelled "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (TDS)."
To wit: Trump is neither deranged or unhinged, on the contrary he is skillfully manipulating his enemies.
21
@Alternate Reality
Oh my goodness, NO. DJT is not capable of manipulating. He is, on the contrary, manipulated by every person who pays him compliments - Kim and Putin and all the sycophants that surround him. He is easily manipulated because flattery is all he understands. He is ignorant and careless with the facts, because he is neither reflective nor informed. He does not, perhaps cannot, read. It is no wonder that twitter is his main means of communication - it is limited, because he is limited. As a result, he is dangerous as the protector of our democracy. Flattery will not suffice.
130
@Alternate Reality
I appreciate the Times' attempt to select a balanced representation of comments posted by readers, but please avoid giving a platform to right-wing propagandists, who stereotype and attack Trump's critics, and who regurgitate the same old false talking points about "the left" and "fake news". Even the few trump voters I know have grown tired of this kind of this kind of hateful, pro-trump rhetoric.
122
@Alternate Reality
This comment is a typical Trumpian tactic - take the obvious mental condition that Trump appears to suffer, and turn it 180 degrees back onto those who have made the diagnosis. It’s the classic grade school taunt as in “I know you are, but what about me?”
We don’t even need expert medical opinions on Trump. Even small children can tell when they are being conned and lied to on a daily basis.
138
He is a beta-tester of our systems and a mirror to our society. He openly says and does what his supporters always wanted, without regret, forethought and fear. Every day he ups the ante in this political casino, finds the system cannot stop him (so far) and his supporters don't waiver whatever he does.
12
My answer to those asking how people can still be strong Trump supporters is Lord Acton's: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In addition, this country was founded by radical religious groups whose members believed that each of them was chosen and predestined for heaven (no free will, works-based religions need apply--free will and good works require self-discipline) and communicated with God directly. That pretty much describes Trump and his followers.
10
The country was founded by agnostics and atheists trying to get free from England’s religious persecution.
5
@HeyJoe (Mrs. Gary here) You are neither of you is correct. Many colonists came in clumps so that they could found places where their religion a) ruled the roost and punish those who don't agree with it (Puritans in Massachusetts, who executed dissidents), or b) would be tolerated without government interference (Catholics in Maryland and Quakers in Pennsylvania). Other colonies were founded strictly for making fortunes from the natural resources of the land.
The founders of our nation state were mostly Enlightenment figures, whose official 'religions' varied but agreed that none should be privileged in the new nation. The existing religious minorities, like the Baptists and Jews, were assured that they would be free of persecution and of taxes to support a 'state church.'
2
The Republican Party has given us two senescent presidents, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. This says something about the party's base but I'll leave that to the pundits.
25
It’s Reagan all over again, but without the surface geniality.
21
When is it time for massive non-violent resistance?
16
If all you do is lie all day, every day, it is REALLY hard to keep track of where you are at any given moment. So, naturally, it’s getting more apparent. Especially if the only thing you believe in is one’s own adulation.
21
The most dangerous time of Trump's presidency will be the lame duck period after he loses the election. He seems perfectly capable of launching a nuclear strike (even on the US) out of rage and frustrated egotism. And we appear to have no way to prevent it. This is the real national emergency. Members of Congress need to start looking at options because they will be blown to smithereens along with the rest of us.
20
I don't think the man is slipping. He is simply a con man. Unfortunately, I fear he will get reflected.
He is liked by 40% of the population because his verbal ability, metal capacity and crassness is on their level. They also relate to his cruelty racism, misogyny and ethnic and religious bigotry. He is tolerated by 1% of the population because he cuts their taxes and eliminates and weakens environmental regulations that clear the way for greater profits. He also tolerated because his administration seats judges to allow for further weakening of environmental laws and regulations.
22
He’s old. He’s in awkward shape. While he has access to excellent health care he could cling on for another decade at least. It’s obvious the stress of the job doesn’t get to him, because he doesn’t understand or do the job.
13
Two remarks to the commenters who wrote in supporting Mr. Trump on this op-ed.
1. You tell your friend, “Jack, you’ve had too much to drink to drive yourself home. I’ll drive you home. We’ll come back for your car tomorrow.”
Jack starts yelling. “Are you a doctor? Are you with the state police? You dont’t know what you’re talking about! I’ll drive if I want! Who are you?”
The point: You don’t need to be a doctor or policeman to be certain someone’s too drunk to safely drive a car. In the same way, a responsible citizen who’s paying close attention doesn’t need to be President Trump’s personal psychiatrist or therapist to realize that the president has serious psychological and cognitive problems. The president is nuts, just like your buddy, Jack, is drunk.
2. The fact that unemployment is low. And employment for members of certain demographic groups is at record levels, in no way justifies the reelection of an unbalanced, irrational, pathological liar.
Donald Trump’s deteriorating mental state makes him increasingly dangerous.
Whatever happens to be going well, it NEVER justifies putting a crazy person into the most powerful political office on the planet. Or awarding him another term of four years.
Try to understand. The president’s behavior clearly points to him being mentally unwell. If his policies suit you, elect a different Republican and have him continue Trump’s programs.
Trump is ill. He should neither be asked nor allowed to continue. In a word, Trump is nuts.
46
@Tom W - Great points! What this whole scene has degenerated to is that President Trump's supporters have had to twist their minds into a big knot in order to continue to support him. They may like his policy positions, but they have a hard time working in the recognition that he has told over 10,000 easily-disproven lies, etc. So yet they somehow make it all come together, in a process psychologists call "cognitive dissonance." The arguments they make with others but more importantly with themselves are things like:
* He's on our side
* He has some rough edges
* He tells it like it is
* His opponents would do anything to get him
* The deep state!
* The lying liberal media
* What about Hillary? What about her e-mails?
And...well, you get the idea. So it's not surprising that his supporters will also work to rationalize his deteriorating mental health, at least now in the early going. But there's little excuse for powerful Republican leaders to do the same; that would be even more evil than the way they've put up with his misdeeds this far.
All that said, let's be realistic about what will happen next. President Trump's condition will get worse, the Republicans will continue to cover for him and won't even begin to consider removing him as the 25th Amendment allows them to do, and all this will just raise the stakes for the 2020 election.
5
@Jerry Schulz
The irony of Trump supporters conceding that the president lies constantly, but consistently include “He tells it like it is” on their lists of Trump’s strengths, is hilarious.
What is the relationship between “telling it like it is” and “constantly lying”? Does it even matter?
“It is difficult to win an argument against an intelligent opponent. It is impossible to win against a stupid one.”
—Bill Murray
3
"Mental deterioration or just Trump as usual?"
It seems the former. But nobody will really know how low he began is presidency.
It is pathetic to see him doing business while president and how bad he is at it. Being president made him rich and that is maddening.
9
Trump's problem now, in addition to his baseline massive incompetence and lack of intelligence, is that he's told too many thousands of lies to keep up with them all. He's just fumbling now, as if he hasn't been fumbling all along.
11
I don’t know about slipping, but it seems to me the president sure qualifies as bloviator- in- chief.
3
"Is Trump, Um, Slipping? Even More?
Hard to judge when business as usual is bonkers."
With Trump it is business as usual and his business is lying. Trump has been doing this act of his for most of his life. To go back to what Kellyanne Conway said about Trump in 2017: "When Trump says something, he believes it to be true and that's why it's not a lie."
But the reality is that whatever comes out of Trump's mouth or off his twitter machine is a lie. And Trump will pile one lie on top of another until he moves on to a different subject to start lying about it.
So, "Is Trump, Um, Slipping? I would say it a continuous slide to Trump's own bottomless pit.
14
"So what do you think? Mental deterioration or just Trump as usual? No fair saying they’re both the same."
Ms. Collins, it might not be fair... but it's the same. And I agree with Nate, below; Trump will win again in 2020.
How will we get another term of Mr. Bonkers? I could offer several viable theories: Russian interference, voter ignorance, gerrymandering, the Electoral College, a divided Democratic party, or some combination of all of the above.
But, when I really think about it, I think the answer is simply this: Every nation of people gets the leader it deserves.
5
For a serious answer to Gail's question: I believe Trump's mental illness has existed all along, for all to see: John, Baron, having his own show to fire people on, etc. It only looks worse now because he is feeling more threatened. I don't think it can be attributed to physiological dementia. It's good the pundit class is finally starting to talk seriously about it, and the psychiatry and psychology professions are starting to break with the "Goldwater rule". They were wrong about Goldwater, of course, but this case is crystal clear. What does he need to do, declare war on the god Neptune?
9
Everyone gets excited when Trump changes his mind, or expresses two opposing thoughts at the same time. This is the privilege of the autocrat. It's about catering to every whim, no matter how it changes over time. It is part of the toddler-like persona of our dictator. One minute the toddler demands the toy from the market, the next he's left it on the driveway ready to be crushed. He goes from toddler to toddler, eyeing their toys, deciding which one to demand. His power is in taking the toy away, as he is unobstructed.
4
Perhaps Trump is slipping. However, I’d imagine that it’s hard to parse out a moment of confusion from an outright lie. Trump seems to lie not only to embellish a story or to hide the truth when he feels the need, but also for no reason at all. Before even getting to the added issue of possible dementia, Trump already lives in a fluid type of reality built on the a precarious foundation of concoctions and confabulations. Add a slipping memory and age to the equation and his narratives become incredibly problematic.
13
I'm just hoping that Trump will realize he is no longer the sharpest tack in the drawer, and that some of his comments lack a certain logical coherence, If so, I believe that he will do the right thing for the good of the country and submit to a battery of psychological tests. If the tests show that his brain is full of more cognitive holes than Swiss cheese, he will surely be willing to resign his office and enter an institution where he can receive the proper care and round-the-clock supervision.
1
@GBM
I am guessing this is sarcasm.
The man has totally lost touch with reality and seems to be regressing back to being a real estate deal guy. As far as his lies go, that has been a trait of his since the beginning of his business career. And just to make things worse, the man simply has no moral or ethical code or direction.
11
Ben Stein, economics teacher, Ferris Bueller's Day Off: "Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill?"
Any thoughts? First, second? Any thoughts? Nope.
3
The column is very witty but the sad truth is that Trump goes on unabated, while everyone knows exactly what is going on.
9
But when you read the sentence That is not the message the White House wanted to send - who is that? What entity is dictating that the president has said something that is not correct?
1
“He has no second thoughts, no second thoughts.”
Whatever he has, "thought" is probably not the word to correctly describe them.
5
syphilis
17
I'm as alarmed by President Trump's behavior as anyone, and nobody will be happier to see him go than me. But just to maintain our perspective, this comment doesn't really belong on this list:
"'And what we have also is Miami,' he concluded. Donald Trump does not actually have Miami."
Well, yes, President Trump DOES have Miami, in a way. As bad as he has gotten, I presume the only point he was trying to make here was that we as the United States have the attractive City of Miami to offer as part of the package of hosting the session at the Doral. I don't think he believes he owns the City of Miami, at least not yet.
1
With their wealth Corporations like J&J can easily absorb these fines without any incentive to change their behaviour. Significant jail terms of senior management and members of the Board if Directors is absolutely required. Unfortunately the law has been written to protect these people.
2
Having watched the progress of dementia in family members, I actually do think indeed this is what is happening. It seems that there is a diminishing connection to reality.
16
The fact is trump is, was and always will be a shameless liar.
Is he slipping?... No, he has just realized there are no consequences to just saying whatever he feels like as “president”.
The spineless, corrupt GOP would protect him no matter what he does or says and he’s going to take full advantage of that.
He has always blurted out fantastic lies without thinking, as “president” he may now be in a bigger spotlight, but that matters little to him... He’s a conman and lies are his tools.
10
He's losing it, but his followers are losing it even more. They have to reach for even more crazy rationalizations. Instead of facing the problem, they go ever further out on the wacky limb with him...amazing.
11
Mental deterioration? Maybe.
Perhaps, though, it is the simple fact that he only has a severely limited repertoire, and what we’re seeing is a desperation born of the need to say something to fill the air space.
He, like many real estate developers, is essentially a grifter who periodically needs to move to a new town that hasn’t heard his spiel yet. New York, from all reports, had long tired of his shtick. The rest of the country is beginning to catch up, but there is no longer any place to which he can go and find an innocent audience. He is in over his head, making it up as he goes, and it is beginning to strain his creative talents, such as they are. Then again, maybe it is the pressure getting to him.
Perhaps Anthony Scaramucci is correct–by March of 2020 Trump will have come up with what seems to him a reasonable excuse (lie) for getting out and will announce that he is not going to seek re-election.Then he can get back to making up for the “from $3 to 5 billion” he’s lost from being President.
7
Seems like you wouldn't ever get confused about what country your father was born in.
11
Three things:
First, narcissism and ever increasing malignant narcissism. It's very evident that Trump's (fantasy) world stops at the end of his nose. At his point he's now well on his way to being what's called a "collapsed narcissist," more and more cut off from a supply of ego support to which he's fiercely addicted.
Second, addiction itself. Anymore, it's a commonplace to point out all of the sign and symptoms Trump exhibits strongly suggesting a dependence on stimulants, Adderall is commonly mentioned, and very likely other drugs. Many, even most, people his age are taking at least some medications...
Third, family history. Many of Trump's ancestors and relatives have succumbed to Alzheimer, alcoholism, or some such. He's now very much at that age...
The conclusions are almost inescapable. Even if he wasn't before, he's certainly Donald the Unfit now.
6
Add one to the "Mental deterioration" column for me.
5
dementia. no doubt whatsoever
7
The more we watch this reality show the more it reminds me of the mad Roman emperors - Commodus, Caligula, Elagabalus. They spent their lives hearing whatever they needed/wanted to hear and I'm confident dissension/disagreement didn't fall into that category.
When you're born into wealth and Dad gifts you a small 60 million $ loan to get you moving in the right direction you quickly learn that people are inclined to do what you say.
And if they don't - simply take what you want and let the lawyers figure it out (see the week's earlier stories about his wall project).
6
It seems patently obvious to me just from his speech patterns that he is suffering from some stage of dementia. It would account for his extreme meanness and the lack of judgment and discretion in expressing it freely, too. He's always been petty, mean, and ruthless, but the dementia is making it worse. Lord help us.
9
I'm reminded of the last days in public life of Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and others, who had minders who saw to it that their charges were in the right places, did the right things.
3
Among Trump, Bolsinaro, Dueterte, Orban, Modi, Erdogan, Putin, Un, and now Johnson, it's starting to look like an international neo-fascist cabal.
Fortunately, the best they could find in the US was a mentally weak dotterer.
Once again, maleficence tempered only by incompetence.
10
The truth is not "he has no second thoughts." The truth is that he has no thoughts. He has only gut reactions, none of which are based on facts or briefings by people whose thoughts are based on research and study.
20
It is becoming more and more likely that we may faced in 2020 with a choice between two presidential candidates, one of whom is becoming quietly senile and another who is seriously demented.
I'm 70 today and closer to the former. I hope to hold it together long enough to make it to the polls, (Putin willing.)
10
As a person who has mis-spoken on occasion I am not as concerned as many here. Especially after a change of multiple time zones.
Biden is in a league all of his own making...I think that his brain surgery is vexing him.
1
To anyone with a brain, Trump is clearly mentally ill and declining faster these days. A noticeable pick-up in pace of the deterioration.
That said, my favorite (recent) Trump statement was uttered last week by The Chosen One: "The Chinese are impressed with my very large brain."
You can't make this stuff up.
17
Trump has a narcissistic personality disorder. His biggest fear is that people will catch on that he is a fraud. The walls are closing in, what with Congress and its impeachment inquiry, Putin and the Oligarchs no doubt wanting more for their money, Democratic election hopefuls beating him in the polls, court cases that risk exposing the details of his financial frauds and all the other pressures of the presidency, a job he does not have the skills to perform. He became most animated selling Doral, what he actually can do - sell real estate.
6
President Trump is a President by subtraction, not addition. He could be fairly called "The Most Self-Absorbed President with No Plan for America."
Aside from a R-Congress/Corporate-ALEC/Uber Rich Guy Tax cut, nothing much has come with President Trump except, well, President Trump.
This poor fellow is so self-absorbed, he apparently hasn't the time or mental capacity to consider or think about much of anything except for himself.
A shallow, incompetent, self, absorbed, lying President. And, some folks are just now beginning to believe he may be a lunatic?
Welcome to the club folks.
5
Gail, you seem completely unaware of the fact that Melania & Ivanka making conference calls to Kim & Xi leading in making negotiations "Greeat Again". Soon peace will reign, equal (meaning we WIN) will resume & Ivanka can start sellling extremely uncomfortable shoes in Shanghai. Please try to keep up!
What's most depressing is that everybody on both sides of the aisle knows that Trump is unfit for office, yet the Republicans won't say or do anything about it.
11
Okay, we can’t say ‘they’re both the same’ but can we say just both? My new slogan is ‘No more taking the pain, we want sane’. Justice must be served. The day of reckoning will come.
2
To my Trump supporter buddies, I have only this to say:
Imagine if this kind of behavior was coming from one of your beloved relatives or a lifelong friend. Who among us would not stage an intervention?
14
My father was exactly like Trump.
He ran his own business, hired for loyalty over skill, surrounded himself with people who agreed with everything he said for the paycheck.
Trump is not mentally unhinged, he is the product of decades and decades of doing whatever he wants, saying whatever comes to mind, and not being held accountable for his words and actions.
Problem for him now is that he can no longer do whatever he wants, get away with saying whatever he wants, and he's being held accountable to some extent for his words and actions.
He wants respect from respectable people but he's not getting it.
He is a global menace.
20
You looks at this picture, and one thing is almost certain: this is a man clearly way, way, out of his depth. He has built his life on faking it to make it.
1
And for the love of god, someone send the man a thesaurus.
Trump seemed demented to me from the beginning. Evidently the President is less important than he seems at least in the short term. Evidently it takes less to manage billions and the U.S. government than one imagines especially if one doesn't appear to be specially good at it.
2
@Michael Cohen
Agreed. Trump was demented from the day he threw his hat in the presidential ring forward.
However, during his time in office, it is worth noting that DT has either become dementeder or more demented. (Your choice.)
4
It's pretty obvious he's deteriorating and at a much more accelerate pace than before. This, on top of his rather severe and life-long mental illness, especially now that his exceedingly thin narcissistic skin is showing more and more transparent by the day - it's obvious he's a clear and present danger to us all.
6
Ever work with that guy who thinks so highly of himself that in every meeting he calls he arrives clearly unprepared and winging it, convinced that his own wonderful self is the only vital ingredient and that everything he says will be absorbed, hook, line, and sinker, by sponges hanging onto every pronouncement, never noticing that he did no preparation and hasn't a clue? That guy.
9
There are garden varieties of insanity, and then there is criminal insanity.
8
If I ask myself who is closer to representing the pure distillation of the American soul, Trump or Biden, I would be hard pressed to pick Joe.
2
He just needs to me slightly more acute than his followers. Not a high bar, and as mentally degraded as Trump is, he still manages that.
2
Trump is definitely slipping, he will be easy for all dem challengers to defeat.
There definitely isn't a systemic polling bias where Trump supporters are less likely to admit it to pollsters.
I mean Trump has made like no mistakes up until this point, so even just one gaffe or scandal should be enough to destroy him.
It is the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6d_YKFO_20
The level of contempt I hold for Trump knows no bounds.
8
Expect an increasingly incoherent Trump as the stress and pace of the 2020 election campaign season kicks into high gear. Also expect that the Republican Party will keep Trump far away from doctors and fully sanitize any findings given the Republican track record of always putting party before country.
10
I hope there is an adult in the room when Trump decides to nuke Iran because his Big Macs were cold. His minions in the GOP see all this and say nothing. If we're all still alive next election I hope Trump and the entire GOP get tossed onto the rubbish.
13
Gail has this amazing ability to seriously point out individual 1's gaffes and idiotic statements and critique them in a sober journalistic manner then finish up with a hilarious one liner underlining her original point, deftly making her point and the reader in "Gails" of laughter.
4
Everyone knows G7 leads to C... as in Congress or Cabinet... where they actually have the ability, if not the honesty and will, to remove a president so clearly unfit to discharge his responsibilities of office. 25 45 and step on it!
1
To the world:
Please stop making excuses for Trump. He is schooling the world's dictators on how to use power to gain personal advantage. He's teaching them that lies and inhumanity don't matter. All you need is a missing conscience and a grotesquely inflated opinion of yourself, along with buddies who are equally psychopathic.
His biggest beneficiaries are the people who are robbing my country and the world blind, along with his BFFs the world's violent dictators. He's just helped Boris Johnson figure out how to shut down Parliament. Just look in the rulebook and see how you can get away with stuff.
10
Slipping? That's the New York state of mind!
Trump has proven he can lie with impunity, because his ignorant followers don't care and the press is too lazy and/or timid to call him on it in real time.
6
“He has no second thoughts, no second thoughts.”
Are you -sure- this is not a misquote? I think Mnuchin (Secretary of Missing Vowels) actually said
“He has no second thoughts, and no first thoughts.”
3
Good grief. Here we go again - Ground Hog day. Same old same old criticisms levelled against the POTUS - with ample evidence provided - - showing him to be utterly incapable of doing the job - yet he's still there!!!??? WHY???
7
He's still there because the spineless Republicans and big corporations are milking him for all he's worth. He's a dream control for them, but a nightmare for the country. Which is more important to you?
1
Of course Trump is nuts - watching any of his so called "appearances" makes this clear. Or lets put it this way - how many of you "readers" ever worked with or for somebody who acts and talks this way. Or would you hire anyone who talks like this. Just asking.
6
Lets take every instance of odd or reckless behavior attributed to Trump at the G7 and then ascribe that behavior to President Obama and let me know if the Senate would scoffingly say “ nothing to see here ”....
At moments like this, Kellyanne would likely reply, Obama lied when he said “we could keep our doctors...”. Obama served 8 years in office and there is one lie the GOP constantly drag out at times like this. JUST ONE!
Let’s keep pretend that we still have a fully functioning government that we can depend on because we really don’t.
Oh, if you have any doubts, go ask Melania.
7
this slow motion,and globally public self emolation by Trump is unbelievably macabre.
If he could see, for even a moment, what a completly
taudry vaudville act he is, he might actually light the match.
6
The aforementioned list of Trump’s .”transgressions” at the “G6 + 1” are nothing compared with other circumstances that may yet propel him to re-election: the reporting that Israel is engaged in confrontation with Iran, for example
Business as usual. We have no evidence that he is anything more a mediocrity. Wharton? Please. We are of the same generation and with a couple of exceptions, any school could be bought into. Nobody remembers him as a standout. Deal making? Bullying, lying and intimidating. He is now the dumbest guy in every room that he walks into, and I am sure that it must be disorienting. So we have a low IQ guy, who is ignorant and without any intellectual curiosity who is the most powerful man in the world. Oh, and he's followed around by a man with the launch codes. Sleep tight.
2
I think Trump's mental condition is irrelevant. His policies and his relationships to other nations are important and they are crazy.
2
If I heard some goofy noise on my front yard at night and it sounded like the current resident of the white house I would call the police and tell them to bring a net.
We have over 300,000,000 people in this country so why did we have to pick a loony to be in charge?
4
He has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
If you look it up in Wikipedia, it sounds like they are describing Mssr. Bone-Spur to a "tee".
No cure for it other than excessive old age.
3
and...he is thisclose to the red button.
3
It would be terribly ironic if after running roughshod over both the constitution and the law the ‘stable genius’ escaped justice on the basis of mental incompetence.
4
In more normal times, a septuagenerian who paints his face orange, dyes his hair platinum blonde and speaks in sentence fragments while still managing to publicly lie more than 10,000 times would rightly be seen as a joke.
Instead, he is the president of the United States. And the GOP does nothing.
What a time to be alive.
8
Trump has possibly contracted the devastating “selective senility” bug that the mush that is his brain is increasingly susceptible to while taking his reliability of recollection to new lows.
1
If you Americans want to be taken seriously in the future, and not have people across the world burst out laughing when they have to look at you, the very least you could do is eliminate your worthless electoral college and reform your campaign finances. If you insist on electing clowns for presidents, the world has every right to make you the world’s biggest joke.
15
Your comment may not be a Times pick, but it's my favourite comment of the day.
Trump’s malady is white privilege. No black president could have made it this long behaving as ineptly and crudely as Trump.
13
The comments I've read feel convinced he's having mental decompensation. I don't agree. He's just a rotten narcissist and a bully who knows how to get his way. He's learned how to control the Republicans and how it can benefit him. He's not smart enough to stop say stupid things and so used to lying he does it reflexively, and really what has happened since he was elected to make him stop lying? Nothing whatsoever.
4
I'm no mathematician, but wouldn't you need to HAVE 3 to 5 billion dollars in order to lose it? The ride he's taking his base on is stunning.
9
@k Not if Deutsche Bank will lend it to you.
2
If there is doubt, I do believe that invocation of the 25th Amendment could shed light on the question.
7
I'm wondering if DT might be considering the possibility that he may lose in 2020 and better start working on his "insanity" plea.
12
Donald Trump was put into office by the electoral college, not the will of the majority of Americans.
One must remember that each and every day.
If you want to correct the system, correct the system.
12
it's obviously mental deterioration -- and the first sign of it was in 2011 when he alleged that President Obama was born in Kenya. That was bonkers. It will be beyond batmerde crazy no matter where he is in early 2021, when I predict a complete and total meltdown, wherever he may be.
12
Second thought!?? Second thought!? He doesn’t have first thoughts. In fact, he probably doesn’t have anything an intelligent person would consider a coherent thought.
18
what do I think? i think we are in grave danger from a president who is losing his mind.
17
To say nutty things is dangerous but to lose one’s mind smacks of carelessness.
1
Hurricane Dorian is heading for Club Doral, not long after President Donald announced that's where he wants to hold the next G7.
Coincidence?
12
Also a psychologist, it is to me very clear that Mr Trump suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder which, by definition, makes him incapable of thinking outside of himself. His ‘performance’ at the G7 was all about self not country.
19
Is Trump slipping? No he fell a long time ago, into the gutter.
11
He's obviously off his rocker. And yes, getting worse.
12
I think Munchkin was exaggerating when he said POTUS has no second thoughts.
Although I suppose we could say he is a...creative thinker.
Combine pathological narcissism with progressive dementia. What you get is the mental state of Donald Trump.
This was evident before he was elected.
Those who voted for him either refused to see or didn’t care. Apparently most still don’t.
17
Lyin' Trump did not fall far from his daddy's tree. And need I point out Fred (his father) died with full-blown Alzheimers? The POTUS is a screaming signpost for early indications of its onset.
I suspect Reagan was, too, though his staff was far more competent in managing it than is the current administration of lackeys, sycophants and minions who appear as clueless as their boss. Heck of a country America has become, ain't it?
So it goes.
John~
American Net'Zen
10
@John
Reagan was fully diagnosed with End Stage Alzheimer's,
which is what ended his life.
In Reagan's second term, Nancy was literally running the U.S. Reagan, *in his Second term was just making up numbers regarding the Pentagon off of the top of his head. He was fully into his view of the U.S. as the "City On The Hill", etc. in spite of all the U.S. sponsored drug running by the C.I.A. in South American to fund the Contras.
All of this combined with slurring of speech ...... remind us of anyone we know ?
The 25th Amendment might just as well be written on toilet paper so long as Congress remains too gutless to put it into effect.
2
Edith Wilson ran the country when Woodrow Wilson had a stroke. Maybe Melania can step up?
7
*****Any attempt to come up with a united stand on climate change, Iran, trade, etc., was torpedoed by American intransigence.*****
Is there some rule that prevents six of the seven from issuing a statement, thereby highlighting how isolated America is under Trump's leadership?
That would be the way to go about it, in my humble opinion.
3
This is the same old Trump... This guy has been this way since the 1980’s; just find a copy of the New York Post and turn to page 12.
7
I'm beginning to feel as if we're all supposed to suddenly admit that we just no longer care just how stupid the man actually is, how destructive his policies are nor what an embarrassment with the rest of the world he's become.
I think it's called news burnout.
I used to pay attention to the news almost every day, but anymore I find myself intentionally ignoring a good portion of the news.
I guess I have my favorite baseball team to thank for being in 4th place for the distraction. They have an immigrant knocking the heck out of baseballs and breaking long held records. That's much more comforting than anything coming out of Washington including the Nationals.
2
Could a judge sentenced Trump to stand in front of the White House and on Fox News with a big sign, I am a liar?
3
I've stopped using the name Trump. The "bonkers prez" should suffice from now on.
4
As if the old Trump was not enough! He was already guilty of obstruction of justice on multiple counts; an unindicted co-conspirator [aka "Individual-1"] who ordered his now jailed attorney, Michael Cohen, to commit a felony; the deaths of immigrant children in his "concentration camps" detention centers which are "crimes against humanity; in accepting and encouraging campaign aid from a foreign adversary; and using anti-immigrant hate speech resulting in the massacre of eleven Jews in their Pittsburgh synagogue, just to name a few. How much more do we need before it's us who are "slipping" into the autocracy of "the rule of Trump" with nary a peep out of Congress that seems, as John Boehner said, to be "taking a nap" while Trump destroys the global economy with his trade war with China, neuters the Atlantic alliance as he did at the recent G7, continues unabated in destroying the environment and making sure that the global warming apocalypse occurs, attacks two Muslim Congresswomen of color and interferes in their travel to Israel, and pulls back from regulating guns even after his anti-immigrant rhetoric led to a massacre of Hispanics in El Paso? He's not slipping; he's just getting much worse in his blatant corruption and criminality as with illegally expropriating land for his border wall and offer to pardon those convicted of carrying it out.
9
What a wonderful world it would be if we all had "interpreters" and "translators" for every thought we uttered.
Edit: What RonRich means to say by "wonderful"is it would be a world of wonder.
1
'So much better than what Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin came up with: “He has no second thoughts, no second thoughts.”'
Nor first thoughts.......
2
It has been reported that Trump promised pardons to any of his associates who use illegal means to build his stupid wall. He has openly flaunted the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution by proposing that the next Group of 7 meeting be held at one of his properties. All that in the last few days. The presidency is corrupt and Congress is in some vegetative state.
5
Slipping? My oh my that's being generous. Now he wants to deny citizenship to the children of US Federal workers and soldiers?
Where is the outrage?
Are we all penguins who watch helplessly as their children are being eaten by predators?
Trump, Kookbanelli and Miller are criminals. This has to go to the SUPREME COURT NOW!
4
We have a president who clearly cannot think straight. My question is do we wait for him to send a missile to one of our enemies and then kick him out of office? We are dumb, it's time to protest, in a big way..remember the 60's. Anybody?
5
Two things- both of great concern :
1.He’s been a liar and cheat and a bully for his whole life.
2.He’s definitely losing it.
25th Amendment
The second thing should scare the heck out any intelligent person.
Nuclear Codes passed over to his great buddies Vlad and Kim?
Maybe.
5
It’s bad enough when Trump is here in the White House, being his usual irresponsible self, but watching his ignorance and addled mind before global leaders is humiliating.
4
What worries me isn't the president's deteriorating mental capacity--already suspect before he became president. Nor his incessant lying, boasting, name-calling, race-baiting, or blaming others for his incompetence. It's the sound of crickets I hear from the GOP while the highest office in the land sinks further and further in a stinking morass of ill-repute.
9
He's been a pathologic liar and malignant narcissist since Fred Sr sent him away to military school. Maybe earlier than that. Nothing new here. It's not getting worse. It's the same. The thing that's worse is the ongoing failure of the GOP and all who support him to recognize how with each passing day and with each lie there is an irreversible price to be paid. What is the tipping point? Is there already not enough blood on his hands? Are we really serious about the tipping point being some nuclear mishap triggered by a mentally unfit individual who has been mentally impaired all along?
5
Agent Orange, down big in the polls, will announce in the spring he's Made America Great Again [sic] and he isn't running for re-election. He won't be able to stand the humiliation of defeat. Shortly before the end of his term, he will pardon everyone (except the co-operators). He will resign on Jan. 19, 2021, J.C. Pence will be sworn in for one day. His first act will be to pardon the Ex-President. In addition, Pence will have to attend the inauguration of Trump's replacement, Donny would not have the grace to go himself. Drain swamped. Ya heard it here first.
2
We live in a county in which roughly 40% of the populace supports a megalomaniac liar, who is slipping so badly he no longer has the energy or competence to tell plausible lies. Beyond that, we have a major pollical party that cowers in the corner while Trump tweets nonsense and hate.
American exceptionalism!!
9
Trump confides to Melania?
Does Trump tell her all about his special love for Kim Jong-un?
Does Trump whisper in her ear about his love for Putin?
When exactly does he do that, as the Trump's have separate bedrooms?
I guess that must be the price one pays for being a Trump wife, having to hear about all of Trump's loves.
Do you think Trump told Melania about Stormy and Karen?
We did have Marla and Ivana brawling on the Aspen ski slopes.
Maybe this time we'll see Trump and Macron duke it out?
Always some sort of drama in Trump's Celebrity Apprentice White House...
2
Trump is completely loony. Whether Melania agrees with him or not, the only "tremendous potential" North Korea has is the potential to do us and our allies great harm with a nuclear-armed submarine. The never-ending lies, the spouting of nonsense, the jarring zigs and zags of Trump's stream of consciousness is best summed up by a cartoon I saw of a TV newscaster's daily summation: "Today the president said the first 437 things that came into his head."
5
He's the president this country's ruling class wants and deserves
4
Forget Trump and his crew.
- Priority: get rid of Mitch McConnell
- Result: Trump is neut... ralized and the Republicans return to being humans, not Trump's zombies.
9
if an elderly man presented in an emergency room, slurring and mispronouncing his words, claiming to be the "chosen one", retweeting that he is King of Israel, blatantly lying about awards he has received, people his wife has met, claiming to have participated in phone calls that didnt happen, the triage nurse would immediately page the psych team to come and do an assessment. There is something seriously medically wrong with this man, in addition to something seriously morally and psychologically wrong with him.
11
Uh, Gail. They ARE both the same.
2
Don't worry. He has the nuclear codes.
Wait. Worry.
4
Trump is definitively slipping and has been for sometime, but in his mental fog, he is also infinitely cruel and stupid, with the border crisis and rolling back environmental protections, which is more than being just bonkers. It's downright scary.
14
I will never understand why the Republican Party has not yet cut its losses and put Pence in charge, unless of course, Pence and McConnell really are in charge and Trump is kept for his distraction value. Clearly Trump is too stupid or too befuddled to know that no one cares what he says anymore.
11
Ho hum ho hum.
Trumpty-Dumpty does it again.
Anything else new?
1
People who know him say he's always been like this, though.
I have no idea what's wrong with him, but what's frightening is that people who voted for him still think he's qualified to be President. I have sometimes wondered how Hitler (I am not saying they are the same) came to power in Germany. Now we have a case where a raving lunatic is President of the U.S.
Thank God some states and industries are ignoring/fighting against his stupidity on ignoring climate change.
If only we had the US doing something about the devastating rain forest fires.
8
Cheer up, Republicans. If it turns out that Trump sinks into medically documented dementia before the election, you've got Joe Walsh at your service.
4
Perhaps he confused Melania and Ivanka, since Ivanka did meet Kim during that photo op in North Korea.
16
@Bea Kolodziej
Great observation!! Another Freudian slip shedding light on what the heck is going on. A lot of folks are wondering why she would abandon Christianity for that Jared Kusher character, so very very unlike her father, and who she could no doubt beat at arm wrestling. That I can tell you. Believe me! Also, see the many photos of them together during her adolescence. A lot of people are saying he is very fond of her. After all, he is the self-proclaimed "chosen one".
4
@Bea Kolodziej I think he confuses Melania and Ivanka in ways so appropriate, none of us would ever want to imagine.
3
Does he have to wander out to a press conference in his undershorts before Congress takes seriously the early stages of his dementia?
14
The president*'s brain is always taking a pratfall on the banana peel of his emotions.
12
Second thoughts?!
3
I love Gail Collins.
8
scarier every day
6
Trump has always been Trump, a tawdry sideshow, diverting our view away from the Brinks truck that the plutocracy has backed up that the US economy to rob us blind. Nothing has changed with Trump as far as I can see. Perhaps America has simply grown bored of his channel.
8
Gail - I cannot imagine *more conspicuous evidence that Trump is not fit for his job. If Trump were City Dog Catcher, and he made public speeches on the Revolutionary War in which he claimed that, in 1775, the American Revolutionaries were obliged to "cover all the airports", and asserted that those self-same Revolutionaries "took to the skies" in defense of the Colonial Cause, that man would be summarily relieved of his responsibilities as Dog Catcher trusted to keep Fido off of the streets.
The fact that he is POTUS, The Commander In Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, the titular "leader" of the free world, and *this is his understanding of American History, or even his comprehension of the TIME period he is living in, seems to make all of this public inanity and insanity perfectly acceptable ?
If he were Dog Catcher, we would be hauling him away in a padded rubber truck !
That we are even *asking ourselves "how much crazy is 'too much' crazy" in a POTUS, is ample proof that we are *already WAY over the "acceptable limit" for ANY crazy in such an office.
8
The time might be approaching when trump will need to bribe another bone spurs doctor to help him escape. Perhaps a fake heart murmur that would cause him to resign and be confined to bed (with lots of KFC), unavailable, of course, for courtroom testimony in his post-administration felony cases. Polls, Congressional investigations and a fired-up electorate are surrounding him. His only out may be another draft dodge. Is there such a thing as hair spurs?
8
I have irritable bowel syndrome but I also sometimes get diarrhea from a germ, and it’s hard to tell when that is happening. I think this is a perfect analogy to Trump’s mental state.
5
I am suffering from Trump fatigue. He is not a "very stable genius", he is a man in need of psychiatric help. If Trump is finally evicted from office in 2020, most likely the nation will suffer PTSD from dealing hourly with Trump's unending lies, precipitous behavior which changes with every single Tweet, his deeply narcissistic need for attention, and the bizarre reality he creates for himself. We are enduring the shredding of regulations that will leave us environmentally damaged for years to come, a stock market that is like a roller coaster ride without the fun, and fear that Trump will push Iran too far - yet he is backed by a power drunk Party out of control, and uncaring about anything beyond keeping power, even at the expense of our democracy.
It is frightening that there are three narcissistic man-baby world leaders right now: Trump; Boris Johnson; and Bolsonaro. Each is in a position to wield power to the detriment of his country and indeed the world. The Amazon rain forest fires are a metaphor for Rome burning...
14
Let me offer another opinion here. Donald Trump never in his wildest dreams ever expected to become President. Everyone thought he just didn't have the demeanor, the gravitas,or the intelligence, even Trump thought he would never get elected. But he did. And after all this time of pretending to be POTUS he has had enough and wants out. He increases his buffoonery so that even all those clueless MAGA-hat-wearers will realize that he is not the president they elected. Now, maybe they will let someone else do the job and let Trump go back to stiffing contractors and business partners and declaring bankruptcy for his real estate ops. It was fun for a while, but enough is enough.
11
More mental deterioration - or outright Russian orders?
He's taking away birthright citizenship from our military, which means some of them will quit and morale will be seriously hurt, destroying our farmers with his trade wars, eliminating markets and agreements that took decades to put in place.
This is what he's doing to two of the groups that are his key supporters. Not just to California where his irrational hatred has always lead to policies to try to hurt the state, not to any group of historically Democratic voters.
Honestly - he's quite simply nuts and running on pure ego, or trying to prevent his debts from being called in from Russia.
7
Who knew a Monty Python skit could last four years?
13
Another indicator of his deteriorating mental capacity is his tweet that his supporters should stop watching Fox News. (Apparently one of its reporters said something to contradict him.)
How would the right know what to say without its daily talking points from Fox?
8
Ronny Jackson is no longer there. Who is Trump's physician now? Or does he have one? It's long past time to administer another cognitive test - or put Trump in jail, whichever comes first!
5
Stephanie "Easy Money" Grisham has a great job: NO press briefings (aren't the driveway "quick, I've gotta take that helicopter" Q& maybe As enough?), plenty of time to come up with nonsensical "rationaizations" for the absurd nonsense that comes from the "president", and no personal Q&As for the press (and NO, this is NOT a request!).
It's like being the translator for Cousin It, but a day late.
6
You ask, "Mental deterioration or just Trump as usual? No fair saying they’re both the same." They're not the same, but they're happening in concert -- a nuclear bomb dropped on a hurricane, if you will.
7
Just when you think it can’t get worse, it does!
4
You know those pictures of presidents they say they are sworn in compared with pictures taken a few years later?
Trump looks the same. The most stressful job in the world does not wear on him at all.
Why? Because he doesn't understand the gravity of the position.
It is not definitive if this is because he is a narcissistic sociopath, or too stupid, or his brain is failing him, or, most likely some combination of the three, but it is completely clear: he is unfit.
That Congress has not taken actual steps to address this is dereliction of duty. That he has any supporters among the American populace is insane.
19
Can’t stand Trump, but the Times’ daily harangues against him are getting trite and boring.
The Republicans proved with Regan the only thing they care about is a warm body in the Oval office.
11
As long as no one (that's you, Nancy Pelosi) will do anything about getting rid of him, why should anyone care?
6
The crazy man in the White House is a Russian asset.
Take that in and appreciate the significance of such a fact.
He pals around with despots while treating our NATO allies like non-entities.
He is guilty of treason, money laundering, tax evasion, obstruction of justice, fraud and fraudulent conveyance. He doesn't pay his bills, large or small. He is a liar and a narcissist.
Trump is the most critical crisis to confront US security since its founding. He and his best friend Putin must pay the price for the damage they have collectively done to the globe and humanity.
God above will bring them the true justice they deserve in ways they can't imagine.
Until then, the world below must deal with them in the ways in which they are used to dealing with others - shudders.
10
a nuclear bomb in a hurricane... the definition of this insane regime...
10
I wish I could laugh, Gail. At this point, it’s a dumpster fire that I pray to God is put out next November. Wish it was sooner
5
"So what do you think? Mental deterioration or just Trump as usual? "
I've seen U-tube videos of Trump speaking when he was in his 30's and 40's. He used big words and spoke in complete sentences. Now he uses simple words, repeats himself and changes topics repeatedly. Quotes of his various speeches reveal how he now speaks and usually it make no sense. He lies all the time, perhaps because he doesn't remember what he previously said.
I believe Tump is either suffering from dementia or the early stages of Alzheimer's. He should have to undergo a mental evaluation...and not one in which Trump can write out the outcome. 'Best mind I've ever seen in a person'.
Donald Trump 1980 Interview
priority .one
Published on Jun 26, 2016
One of the earliest television appearances of Donald Trump. Predates the construction of Trump Tower.
https://youtu.be/0-w47wgdhso
11
I've seen those, too, and there is indeed a stark difference. He is obviously in mental decline.
Unless...perhaps he knows this is what his base wants?
For years anyone who knew him would say “It’s Donald being the Donald”. Translation: he’s an unrepentant liar, a con man , a crazy man.
9
business bonkers? maybe but with larry o'd, and a o c for starters (and the nyt own self, announced commitment to trashing the prrsident), what's not bonkers?...
2
My father had terrible dementia and this is exactly how it started.
The bigger question is what will ever become of the GOP. They are silent now, but watch them run for the hills when Trump finally goes over the edge to the point where even his base realizes he is an incoherent idiot. At that point they will pretend that something “just“ happened with Donald Trump and act like they’re swooping in to save the world from him.
But I think even with gerrymandering, Russian influence, voting machine irregularities, and suppression, the country will see through it and the Republican party could literally implode. I would think the party would want to do things now to avoid this. Some short term policy gains now are of no use if their party is ultimately decimated for 50-100 years.
6
Shhh. Don't give them any ideas.
I note again - this discussion is pointless!
Mr Trump actually is in his full senses except behaving like a vagrant child and challenging anyone or everyone to not talk about him and increase his ratings but also to set a new norm for his supporters. And all the NYTimes comment selection is exactly supporting that behavior.
Rather than getting million comments against Trump I would prefer someone on his face challenge his mental condition! That nobody will! So all this writing is just venting out your own frustrations
The president’s recent appearance at the G7 just cemented the fact that the US has lost its standing in the world.
Leaders from other countries have recognized that this president is basically losing his mind. Anything he says has to be taken with a huge grain of salt and then discounted.
How can anyone believe anything he says?
He’s a good example of a yo-yo. Up and down, back and forth. And lies like there is no tomorrow. I have nothing but disgust for anyone who voted for and who enables this man.
10
He's Donald Trump. What else do you expect? Intelligence? Informed opinion? Good judgement? Please!
2
Yes I agree with some of the comments that DT is freaking out. Why? Because he never wanted to be president. He wanted what Hillary got. More popular votes but not enough electoral votes. He could then rage from the sidelines about what a rigged system we have. That he was cheated of the presidency. He would be in our face more than he is now. Possibly starting his own TV network to rant and rage daily while making millions off of subscriptions. He would be in heaven.
13
You're so mean Gail. Little Donnie is doing the best he can. He's a good boy. Just don't feed him after midnight or he'll turn green and start flashing people.
1
It’s Gail’s job to be amusing, but I find nothing funny in the dismemberment of our Republic by this half-brained idiot and his co-conspirators in the Republican Party.
The Republican silence in the Senate and their pact to never vote against a fellow Republican, no matter how bad or destructive, is what allows Trump’s antagonistic, name-calling incompetence to reign supreme. What we are seeing is nothing short of how a President becomes a King. We do not have an Executive with privilege but an Executive directed government with all subordinate parts of the government now being turned to support the man in the WH — not the nation for whom he is supposed to work. Reagan made government the enemy and so it now is with a tyrant at the head protected by the Reagan Party.
Will no one rid us of this anti-democratic, know nothing authoritarian? The Senate has the means but the Republicans must end their silence and choose for the people over the President.
9
Steve Mnuchin has become a Sancho Panza to Donald Trump’s version of Don Quixote.
And while mental illness is not something anyone should ridicule,Mnuchin who seems relatively cogent should know better, The only thing he is suffering from is terrible judgment coupled with a low emotional IQ.
5
Nah, Trump is just hopelessly narcissistic, intellectually lazy, emotionally crippled, and a pathological liar. Always has been. One can understand how these characteristics taken together could be mistaken for dementia.
As long as we’re a country of bigots we’ll get what we deserve
3
I fail to see why this narrative seems to be gaining some narrative right now. Did any of you read the transcripts of his WaPo and NYT interviews while he was still a candidate? Complete word salad.
Trump has always been incoherent and nuts, not to mention a con artist, criminal and sexual predator. And it's looking more likely that he has a serious fear of Putin. The fact that one major political party runs interference for his crimes and 40% of the electorate thinks having a criminal and moron as a president is a good idea boggles my mind constantly.
10
'Tis the infirmity of his age; yet he hath ever but slenderly ever known himself.
Yeah, he's goin' places alright.
Folks, please - enough with the 25th Amendment fantasy. Try reading the amendment sometime. In order to remove a president under that amendment, the president needs to be thrown out by a two thirds of both the House AND the Senate making it a harder pull than even the impeachment you all seem to have given up on.
I guess Muellerism has evanesced and this fantasy is all you are left with. Forget the fantasies: Just try to vote him out. If you can...
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
5
Folks, please - enough with the 25th Amendment fantasy. Try reading the amendment sometime. In order to remove a president under that amendment, the president needs to be thrown out by a two thirds of both the House AND the Senate making it a harder pull than even the impeachment you all seem to have given up on. I guess Muellerism has evanesced and this fantasy is all you are left with. Forget the fantasies: Just try to vote him out. If you can...
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
3
Trump is not deteriorating. He is escalating his bullying, gaslighting and lying, as sociopaths do when they don't get their way.
You see, we are idiots that need things explained to us by his Superiorness. The fact that many accept his crazy-sounding explanations is proof positive in his mind that we are idiots, and is proof positive in the mind of his supporters that he is somehow risking something on their behalf, by going against what they see as the Wicked Establishment.
He has NEVER been coherent or in any category we would call normal, sane, or rational. This post is not meant to be insulting, it is simply a factual account of the way sociopaths operate. Expect more of the same.
2
Amazing the extent to which people bend over to explain this away as mental illness, chemical imbalance, Alzheimer's, etc. Trump is simply an incompetent white man in a country that breeds them by the millions and allows them to rise to positions they do not earn and do not deserve. Our government and corporations are overrun with them. Stop making excuses for these people.
10
This is the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan...
4
There's no telling what dirty tricks the gop will pull along with Russia.
1
Regardless of the origins of his disfunctional behavior, whether it is clearly mental or simply meaness, we have the means to contitutionally deal with it, Either the 25th amendment or impeachment. The problem is that there is no desire on the part of his fellow Republicans to confront him. We must face the fact that Donald Trump is, in fact, a puppet. He is the useful idiot of both the Russians and the GOP, to be used for furthering their own goals of personal enrichment, regardless of the short and long term consequences to our country and the world.
3
Slippin' into darkness...and trying to take all of us with him.
2
Actually....It is really very easy to see when business as usual is bonkers. This sad little man is....um....slipping....on a slippery slope. We are seeing a version of Nero and his fiddle. Pathetic. Sad.
3
Trump has dementia with an overlay or mental illness. He's crazy -- plain and simple. The G7 accomplished nothing because sane people from the other nations were trying to deal with the crazy person in the room. Anyone who has dealt with a mentally ill family member recognizes Trump's mental illness and the way it plays havoc with the sane people compelled to deal with the mentally ill person.
Trump needs to be removed because he is beyond incompetent, he is insane and he is a danger to every person on the planet.
7
Trump is gone, out of his mind and he wants to take everyone else down the rat hole with him.
This has gone on well beyond tolerance and must be stopped!
When with Mitch McConnell the US Senate and the Republican Party remove Trump from The White House before he kills us along with the economy?
3
It's fair to say Trump has lost touch with reality, like when he tells underlings to break the law to get his stupid wall built on time for the 202 election, he appears to think that voters will reward him with another term for his illegal action.
4
Trump having "second thoughts on everything"?
This implies that he has "first thoughts" beyond the gibberish he spews on a daily basis. I find no evidence in the record where this is so.
2
Is Stephanie Grisham related to John, the fiction writer? That would explain her qualifications for the job.
2
Reads like a reality show!
1
I woke up and read the banner headline: “25th Amendment Invoked; Trump to Serve Time in Hospital for Criminally Insane.” The article went on to detail all the administration officials (from Pence to Hope Hicks) who were photographed being perp-walked in orange jumpsuits across the White House lawn. People were chanting “lock them up!” It took half an hour to get everyone into waiting vans....pigs were flying outside my window and the cat was knitting a sweater. Geez, I gotta stop eating pizza as a bed night snack...
7
To the Cabinet: It is time for you to institute the 25th Amendment. Do it today. You need to help Trump stop making a fool of himself and by association - you. Trump needs professional mental health care. The country needs relief. Cabinet, do your job. Institute the 25th Amendment today.
2
His comment on Puerto Ricco's corruption should be taken seriously after all he is the worlds best expert on corruption
3
Another day, another Trump column--that is much like the other columns. Is there nothing else on the planet worthy of discussion by the free press?
Not only is Trump fixated with Trump, but so is Gail.
1
Your banter is getting tiresome! Trump has rubbed it on you. How about getting a bit serious
What Rex Tillerson said, times 20...
7
If we survive, we need a massive repudiation of the Abomination and all his minions at the next election. Not just in the crucial swing states to carrry the Presidency, but everywhere. The rejection needs to be "yuge" and undeniable.
I doubt it will be. The safe bet is that the plutocracy and the idiots it has fooled or bribed will see to his reelection. What happens at that point I shudder to contemplate. Not for much for me and my wife, as we are ancient, but for our children, grandchildren, and their peers all over the world. America has become an orange fungus blighting the planet.
2
One thing I tried to empress upon my children was to think before they spoke, don’t be afraid to speak your mind but think before you let the words come out of your mouth. Trump has lost the ability to understand his own thoughts, he really has become a babbling idiot. In a normal family environment, loved ones would step in to help, maybe take him to a doctor for evaluation. If he were a CEO of a large company with a board of directors, they may ask him to step down or take a leave of absence and get some help. What we have, is a Republican Party that will defend and protect the babbling idiot, normalize the babble, and eviscerating anyone who suggests there might be a serious problem, which makes us all crazy for going along with the insanity.
3
It’s not funny. Trump looks up at the sky and call himself “the Chosen One”. On two different occasions, Trump asked about dropping a nuclear bomb on a hurricane to disperse it. Laughter may be a release from hysteria and fear, but it lessens the urgency of removing this nut from power before he kills us and/or destroys our America. And the NYT headline writer gets cute with asking if Trump is slipping? For our sake, IMPEACH NOW.
8
Trump's favorite word is "deal". How's about spelling it backwards and doing a little of that? Fat chance.
5
Responsible Self respecting Republicans have become like Judge Crater. Vanished without a trace.
2
Not only is he on the back nine,
he's driving his cart on the 18th green.
Get the hook.
3
All I know is that next year's G7-1 should be in Ossining or Lower Manhattan so our esteemed G7-1 cohorts won't have such a long commute to meet with him.
2
Laughing and crying
1
Okay, Trump is mentally impaired and cruel and basically uninterested in anything other than his own reflection. That said, what strikes me as truly, unforgivably insane is the fact that the US House of Representatives has still not impeached Donald Trump.
10
I believe it is caused by mass hypnosis from Fox News. Trump supporters whom I know watch only Fox News and claim everything else is fake news. We now have the largest and most dangerous cult in U.S. history.
11
Its not fair when reporters take the President's words out of context...oh wait, never mind...
1
“I have second thoughts about everything” makes a lovely pair of bookends with “I don't stand by anything.”
In between tweets about "Crooked Hillary"TM, bedbugs, and nuking hurricanes, Trump worked hard to explain what was discussed at the G7: "Fake News", as well as to explain why he wasn't at a meeting attended by leaders of Germany and India because he was meeting them someplace else.
Then of course there was the imaginary phone call from China, just like the imaginary calls from Mexico and the Boy Scouts a while back.
“Mental deterioration or just Trump as usual?”
We may never know its oringes.
3
Does it really matter at this point?
Gail, what do I think? I think he needs to be removed from office ASAP!
2
Both.
1
America must keep the crazy uncle from any meeting where normal people gather!
Such an embarrassment!
Basically Donald Trump is a corrupt meathead, incredibly stupid without a moral spine. Yet, Trump's hate, racism, misogyny, and venomous rhetoric feed his MAGA moronic supporters. The wealthy and Corporate executives, served by the corrupt Republican party, greatly benefit from Trump's malicious presidency. To summarize, the MAGA idiots get their jollies from Trump's racism and hate, and the wealthy 1% are gorged with money. What's wrong with this reality?
6
I say let the G7 have their conference at the Doral. It's a farce while he's involved anyway. Let's give Trump one last monwy making scam on his way out the door. He can lather sunscreen on his special guest Putin.
1
Donald Trump is a narcissist. This is a form of mental illness. He is also a liar. I wish you people in the media would call him whatb he is and that is a liar. Stop with the soft labeling of "untruths." If it were President Obama you would call him a liar straight out.
4
The worse Trump gets, the more dug in his idiot Mob becomes. How to explain that?
5
OMG! Look out Florida! He’s going to Nuke that hurricane just as it hits you.
5
At moments like this I am always reminded reminded of Howard Dean's "scream" in 2004 when he was running in the Democratic primary for president, expressing honest exuberance for his campaign. His behavior was considered un-presidential and essentially disqualified him. In comparison Trump started his campaign openly attacking immigrants with accusations of murder and rape, and has been hell bent on destroying civility, honesty and rationality in the office of president since. Now we are confronted with what appears to be his accelerated mental deterioration with little or no objection from his party, and he is running for a second term. When is enough enough?
3
How could you miss The Chosen One? King of Israel? Or nuking hurricanes, in order to spread radiation through the world. The guy should be taken away in a straight jacket.
7
Trump is ...and always will be....your crazy Uncle @ the Thanksgiving dinner table who claims to have all the answers. He's not quite sure what the question was ..or what it even means for that matter...but what the heck...he's a couple of glasses of wine in and on a roll. You play along...and wait for him to either pass out or leave...
3
Idiocy. Is. What. Defines.Him. And. His. Supporters.
3
Let me boil this down to a crude tea: Is Trump crazy, demented, or just plain stupid?
Why does that matter?
If we're going to fix the damage caused by Trump we must fix the divisions and distrust that caused this (expletive) to be elected in the first place. Which means some sort of reconciliation between the left, the middle, and the right. No one is talking about reconciliation, which is why this problem will perpetuate itself after Trump.
2
“President Trump confides in his wife on many issues including the detailed elements of his strong relationship with Chairman Kim,” his press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, explained. “And while the first lady hasn’t met him, the president feels like she’s gotten to know him too.”
Immediately reminded me of the M*A*S*H episode where Hawkeye and Trapper invent a Major Tuttle in order to donate his salary to an orphanage. Pretty soon everyone “knows” Tuttle and they are all talking about him.
3
The GOP was handed over to an angry senile moron. Why? The USA is now run by this angry senile moron. Why hasn't Congress fast-tracked impeachment?
4
The first lady has perfected an impenetrable mask when she's in public so it's hard to know if she might like to trade tyrants with Ri Sol-ju.
At least she'd get one who's revered as a god instead of one who only thinks he is.
1
My Grandfather comes from a wonderful place in Germany. Oh wait, he too was born in the Bronx. (True, my great father was German.) Thanks for bringing a smile to my face this morning. Truth is always stranger than fiction. And Trump proves it everyday. This is a man, that based on his bromance with North Korea's leader would probably cozy up to Hitler in 1939. (Some of those Nazis are good people, I can hear him saying.) Every day is crazytown at the White House.
4
Same type of stuff you heard before he surprised most everyone the first time. It only helped him. Despite wanting neither HC nor him to be the nominees or president, I did feel a sense of elation when he won, that the press, which had so disappointed me by abandoning fair coverage, had gotten a slap in the face.
Never contemplative, they doubled down on one-sided coverage. You compare someone to Hitler, you just show a gross lack of historical knowledge or that it's just propaganda. They exaggerate and make up things about him and his family with the same freedom of invention he often engages in. He sure was right about the Russia investigation being a witch hunt against him (no one needed Mueller to know what Russia had tried). Nor did there appear to be obstruction. Even a lowly president is allowed to complain about unfair treatment and there is already overwhelming evidence of that. No bribery, no suborning of perjury or intimidation. Though I think Mueller honest, the decks were clearly stacked against Trump. Yet, he was right and the media largely wrong. Good job, guys.
I don't know who will win this time either. But, the more I see the press continue its assault, the more it suggests he will and probably should win again, despite his faults. The polls right now mean nothing and we should all know that. Collectively, we get a president we deserve. Most people don't want an experienced, moderate president. They want their team to win. So, don't complain.
1
There is “room” for Dementia in the already resident Sociopathic Personality Disorder. There is also “room” for free-floating
Pathological Lying in an already corrupted Oval Office. Only one of “President” Trump’s Diagnostic Sociopathic Symptoms...is His
Absolute Enjoyment of his ubiquitous occupation of our National
Center of Attention.
2
Mad King George lost America. There seems to be little doubt that Trump is mad. What remains to be seen is what mad king Donald will lose.
3
Trump isn't neither senile or suffering from dementia. Donald Trump is an emotionally unstable, egomaniacal, habitual lying, psychopath. Trump was elected President because his cruelty, his mind-set, has always been apart of the character of "greatest nation of earth".
Instead of going on about Trump ,we need to examine the people who voted for him. As the saying goes, 'Birds of a feather ...'
5
I would argue that Trump doesn't have first thoughts. Thought requires some level of cognition. He's all brute, gut nastiness, all the time.
4
Most decidedly worse. And, of course, a whole lot more embarrassing for all thinking Americans.
3
Mnuchin has it wrong. Tump has no first thoughts.
1
He is definitely disintegrating. No 2 thoughts are the same. Every utterance is a stand-alone monument to his deterioration. I cannot believe ANYONE, even the sycophants in his administration try to cover for the detritus that comes out of his mouth.
5
When Is NYT going to do an extensive review of the numerous attempts by psychology professionals to assess Trump?
2
Maybe when Grisham burns out--as did Spicer quickly and Sanders slowly-- he could hire Jon Lovitz, The Pathological Liar": Yeah, that's it!
What do you mean no fair saying they're both the same? That's clearly the correct answer.
1
Well, we may never know. Maybe Melania did meet with Kim and confided with the charming N. Korean without Trump's knowledge or consent. Nothing surprises me anymore from this WH.
No Christmas card for YOU this year, Gail Collins. Again.
Gail, as a professional editor, may I humbly suggest that instead of saying “...[Tump] makes things up...”, you say he “lies”? Why use three words to convey that the president is an unrepentant liar, when one precise word will do?
11
Mental deterioration from what?
This guy has been a low brow hack since day one.
All of his anger and jealousy stems from this guy never being an A-lister in the New York City party circuit.
He was a laughed at outsider then, and a bitter old incompetent now.
12
Ms Collins: You’re going full steam ahead at bad mouthing He Who Shall Not Be Named. That’s short term gain at the expense of slightly longer term. Sound familiar? You’ll be sorry......
Yet, as the signs of dementia multiply, his support among the Republican faithful only grows. Not to mention his corporate campaign contributions.
4
So Grisham is the next at the podium to "explain" things at the WH. Just more lies piled on top of more lies.
The swamp has turned into a cesspool, and yes he is losing it more and more each day right in front of our very eyes. Time to rid the country of this man and his band of grifters.
VOTE HIM OUT.
9
You get older, you forget things, and sometimes mix things up. Joe Biden has the mental capacity to catch himself and make a correction; Trump doubles down. That's the difference.
757
@J Dalton--It doesn't help that he has Stephanie Grisham and others to manufacture explanations for his bizarre statements. These Trump caretakers have a lot to answer for.
124
@J Dalton More of a difference than that. There is the malice behind everything with Trump. There is a big difference between a good person who is forgetful, surrounded and supported by other good people who are not forgetful, and a malicious, hateful person who is forgetful, surrounded and supported by other malicious, hateful people who may or may not be forgetful.
193
@J Dalton In addition, trump is a habitual liar.
17
We heard for 2 years day in and day out that Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election.I dont suppose someone with dementia could have pullled that off, but now that we know there was zero evidence to corroborate those claims, the media recently whipped out the race card. When lots of old pics of Trump with African American leaders, and how he donated millions to their causes, the racist ploy has all been silenced.
Now the media is back to offering a clinical diagnosis of his mental state through TV? Didnt we already determine a while back that you just cant do that?
Whatever happened to fighting your political opponent on policy?
This reminds me of Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men". Please tell us you have more a reason to elect Democrats then a fake analysis of Trump. The future of the country is at stake here..
Seriously, if this is what Democrats have to resort to, they are in big, big trouble this coming election.
1
@NYCSurgical
Trump. Didn't collude, but he openly solicited the aid of a country that is/has been our enemy. That in itself is treasonous. Since when did we begin trusting Russia? No excuses can be made for such appalling disloyalty to our country.
Mueller said Trump was Not exonerated, excoriated the political bias in our govt. and said that the courts are still looking into Trump.
'Is Trump, Um, Slipping? Even More? Hard to judge when business as usual is bonkers.'
Just remember, Trump has immediate access to the nuclear codes and can launch them anywhere and any time he wants.
There is NO adult supervision if he goes off the rails, has a senior moment, or just exercises poor judgement in a crisis.
It would be kinda funny except it's no laughing matter.
988
Michael Tyndall, I would worry too if Donald Trump had done something irrational. All I've seen so far are actions far shrewder than his critics.
Take the government shutdown, for example. Remember how that was supposed to be a huge mistake that would reverberate for the rest of his presidency? Didn't happen.
While under constant attack by an almost deranged opposition Donald Trump has used the cover of the noise to get things done. Appoint judges and justices. Bring Kim Jong Un closer to peace. Goose the economy. Build a wall (figuratively).
Sure, he hasn't done as much as he said he would. But no one can. He's the only president I've seen willing to take risks, fail publicly, learn from his mistakes, and move forward. Only a businessman like Donald Trump will have learned how to do that. And only from taking risks comes rewards.
3
@Michael Tyndall
So let's all just sit by and watch Trump destroy the future for our children and grandchildren.
Crank up those trillions in deficits.
Reduce regulations on harmful pesticides.
Release more deadly methane gas in the air.
Ignore the lead in our drinking water.
Rescind pollution standards.
Separate and torture innocent children from their parent.
Give children in the hospital with life threatening illnesses 33 days to get out of the country.
Incite violence and instill widespread hate and fear of people of color.
89
@Michael Tyndall
He is proving he can destroy so much of the planet without needing the nuclear bomb. In fact he can claim that despite what so many people said, he hasn't used the nuclear bomb "which Trump totally can. Trump loves the planet."
35
I don't think the president is mentally ill or going senile. He has gotten where he is -- at the pinnacle of wealth and power -- by plying the shtick exemplified in this column for his entire adult life, to the great admiration of a sizeable fraction of the population. Why should he want to act any other way?
217
@William Wroblicka
Lack of change, or interest in it, is not evidence of stability, indeed, if he is mentally ill, he may not be capable of changing, or even wanting to. And he should want to act some other way, because the current way is going badly.
32
@William Wroblicka
Hence the vacuous nature of the old boys network. Platitudes float.
19
@William Wroblicka: I've asked the opinion of several psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists in the USA and Europe. They all say that Trump is a severe narcissist, comparing him to the likes of Nicolae Ceaușescu or Jean-Bédel Bokassa.
38
Mad Cow Disease from gamey Trump Steaks?
5
The world became stupid! and decided to be like that .Israel and Iran are attacking each other, and Trump is the first page news, 365days for the last 2 years. Starting with America , The G6 hypocrisy and cowards behavior enabling Trump mental disturbance to look normal for the rest of the population of this planet. They should be straight forward , and ignore him 200%. We all know, the world knows that this man can not behavior with diplomacy, he doesn’t want to compromise about anything, obviously he’s not normal. Forget about his 30 thousand lies daily . This is the only fact. . The hypocrites criticizing Brasil and wants to give million of dollars to help with the fire , ok, but . instead of blaming the policies of the president Bolsanaro, they should think about their vicious interests in commodities, Many countries buy-raw material , steel...,and many other products from Brasil, Like China, United States, Argentina, Netherlands and Japan.. Germany... They should stop send their corporations to collaborate with the deforestation , specially now that the soybeans will be trade with China. Nobody wants to talk about that. Trump is burning America with his idiotic policies specially the environment laws , guns, infrastructure... you name it. We have a serious problems. At least we have a hope in 2020. Vote blue.
1
Please, please keep this relentless verbal take down going. It is like water on the Wicked Witch of the West...Narcissist ego annihilation.
1
This presidency is one giant Ponzi scheme.
3
To have second thoughts, you have to have first thoughts
7
I wish journalists would resist the urge to diagnose others with cognitive disabilities. (I know you’ll claim that you’re not, but— yeah, ya kinda are.) You and I are not qualified to do so. As others here have pointed out, it could be the behavior of a blowhard who is in over his head and panicking.
What we do have the right to assess and act on are his policies and decisions. And it’s our duty to do so.
Let’s leave the speculation over his mental state to educated professionals and stop being so glib and gossipy about something that is still so horribly misunderstood and effects so many.
1
I have known many people with ADHD, some with Asperger's, and a few with dementia. Trump, in addition to his blatant narcissism, exhibits traits from all three. He is truly damaged goods. Dementia often progresses slowly in the early and middle stages, so it's hard to say if he's getting worse.
5
It’s definitely getting worse, and it’s terrifying. I hope we can soon reach the point at which enough Republican senators in “safe” districts can back impeachment so that we can remove Trump from the White House. Surely some will realize that being tied to this crazy man will kill the Republican Party.
3
Gail,
Does it matter if he is slipping more?
Does it matter whether it is mental illness, dementia, or just plain lying trump?
What does matter is no one will do anything about it (except reelect him).
Republicans love him.
His base love him.
Supreme Court owes him.
Media even loves wondering if he is slipping. It sells media.
4
It still amazes me when King Donald repeatedly says these ridiculous and outright lies, and the Republicans just sit back and they don't say a word. Where has their common sense gone?
The amount of lies (let's not call them untruths, let's be real) he tells in a day is just mind boggling. And oh so UNpresidential. It's become the norm and it shouldn't be.
4
And in all of this madness and treasonous activity, GOP leaders remain yes men and women standing in line to shine Trump's shoes. How sad and embarrassing this all is.
4
". . . Trump has been a terrible failure." True. But to the True Believer, it doesn't matter. It's a kind of cult thing. Facts don't matter. Only Trump matters.
3
For once I agree with The Mooch. Article 25, now, before Trump blows something up for real.
3
I would like to congratulate reporter Yamiche Alcindor for calling our leader out on a lie, but she is only one small voice in a very very large world. The longer the Republican party allows this man to go on spreading lies the worse he will become. I saw Trump years ago outside one of his failed hotels in Atlantic City. He was surrounded by a huge group of his toadies. I recall he looked as ignorant then as he does now. No, he looks worse now because he has a larger group of toadies who are allowing him to destroy our country.
5
Trump having second thoughts? A compound oxymoron, sadly....
1
Trump has been a mental defective since day 1. It was obvious to anyone who had any discernment. As top notch men in his Cabinet either left or were forced out all the restraints were removed and he is now become a free range chicken. His advisors like Stephen Miller, one of the most vile and cruel men any President in memory has enlisted forms his immigration policy. Then there is Navarro a discredited economist forming his economic policies. The farce will reach new levels.
5
Mental deterioration or just Trump as usual. They are certainly not the same when one has control of the nuclear button. I think the possibility of Trump being nuts is real and should be investigated fully.
3
Zingo zango. It's Trump's version of political Tango. Say any nonsense and then double down on it.
1
We must trick Mr. Trump into wearing a Tan Suit. Then Mitch will personally have him out on his ear.
4
What I find amazing is my AA pilot neighbor a anti socialist trump supporter. When I pointed out his job depended on a socialist program, Air Traffic Control, he couldn’t see it.
Being a airline pilot and being intelligent are not a given, I worked as a line mechanic for AA and dealt with many a mentally challenged person in charge of driving a airliner. The only requirement is the ability to do whatever the person on the radio working for ATC tells you to do.
3
It is time for the “Trump is mentally unstable or intellectually unfit to be President” declarations to migrate from the realm of the Op-Ed or editorial to the news sections. More than enough contradictory and nonsensical utterances, in addition to his divisive, bigoted rhetoric and pathological lies, have been made so there is a factual basis for front page headlines such as “Trump Sounds Unstable in Press Conference” or “ Trump Rally Features Performance by Disturbed President.”
As best summed up by Mona Lisa Vito in her expert testimony, Trump’s mental unfitness for the high office he occupies is not an opinion, it is a fact.
5
What really disturbs me is that even after watching a number of Trump's "team" end up in prison or cutting deals to stay out of prison...and listening to some of the hateful things Trump says about appointees who fall out of favor with him...STILL he has people willing to step into positions that require them to lie and look as foolish as he does. What is the draw? Do any of these people really listen to the things he says? I'm not talking about people who only listen to one-sided news reports; I'm talking about people who are right there to hear the things coming out of his mouth firsthand. How do they face themselves in the mirror everyday?
2
I see an aging brain exacerbated by extreme stress, along with incompetency and an aberrant personality. At age 66 I can see my own brain groping for thoughts, but, ye gads, there’s groping and then there’s bat crazy. He’s the latter.
5
I hope Trump doesn't actually have a mental illness or some form of early dementia. Like most of us, I have known people with these conditions, and no one, even Trump, deserves those problems. As a compassionate human being, I wouldn't wish these on anyone, even someone I despise as much as Trump.
Furthermore, it that turns out to be the case, I would suggest he's had thing problem since before being elected, as he's always been a total oddball.
But it would also give him an "excuse" for the deplorable behavior he's exhibited since the beginning of his time in politics.
So for these reasons, I hope that he does not have any such affliction of the brain, and is simply a horrible person who lies constantly, treats near everyone like dirt, is intellectually lazy such that he refuses to take the time and effort to learn from the vast array of expertise at his disposal, and is generally in way over his head as president.
None these scenarios, of course, is good for our country.
The sooner he's no longer in charge, the better.
1
Trump, like a child wanting his way, just pops out with anything that will get him there. He may not even think he's lying but "negotiating." All's fair in the Real Estate world apparently.
More worrisome is his staff cleanups. They're supposedly adults and know they're lying. Everyone in political PR knows how to put out a positive spin but few are willing to flat out tell a porkie, as the British Cockney slang calls it. Pork pie - lie, get it?
Yet without batting an eyelash out comes almost as bizarre an explanation as from their boss. So who's the worst player? The one maneuvering the press to give him the coverage - or diversion - that he wants? Or the paid staffer who is willing, on national television with people they work with and spew the lie knowing everyone in the room knows it's a lie?
All abusers continue to get away with it because they have enablers. Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, all were protected by people who supposedly knew better but chose to continue when, at that level, they could have certainly gotten another job without the horrors.
To some selling their soul may not come cheap but it sure comes easy.
3
Trump lies. Habitually. To the point that he has habituated a nation to it. He is devoid of moral compass and self-awareness. He is the perfect post-modern president. Truth, what is truth?
2
Maybe a request could be made to allow Kim Un to be part of G7.5 ? Or G 8.5 with Russia.
"Scary" were the public opinion polls in 2016 that continuously showed Trump within a few points of Mrs. Clinton, despite gaffe after outrage after idiocy. So let's define "scarier" as the fact that, even now, extrapolating from today's opinion polls, we have to recognize that tens of millions of American are still going to vote for him. Bankrupt farmers will vote for him. Members of labor unions will vote for him. Religious fundamentalists will vote for him. People who won't admit it will vote for him. Fasten your seat belts for "scariest".
6
"So what do you think? Mental deterioration or just Trump as usual? No fair saying they’re both the same."
They're both the same.
1
I think it's VERY unfair that the President isn't given credit for consistency because if his mouth is moving, you know he's lying.
4
Reading about Trump's pathetic performance at the G-7 meeting reminded me of a little kid who becomes increasingly isolated at school because his peers realize that there is something wrong with him. The difference is that a child can expect help from his teacher and parents.
2
Failure on the world stage leaves no where for even Trump's sick psychie to deny and hide. He was a big fish in a little pond before, just New York, Reality T V etc and with a good P R team fooled a lot of people. There is no bigger stage to fail on than the United States Presidency
3
Poor Stephanie Grisham. She's going the way of Sean Spicer. Making up the most outrageous lies to cover for her boss, while trashing whatever reputation she ever had. I suppose we'll see her on Dancing with the Stars in the not too distant future.
3
Trump has a secret. His behavior is that of someone who knows his secret will soon be known. And there's nothing he can do about it. The secret? His tax returns will show that almost any American has paid more taxes annually than Trump has in the last 25 years. It will also show that he has enormously inflated his wealth. So much of his persona is built on the lie of his self-made man affluence that he knows he will not be able to show his face once his secret is out. It could be mental deterioration, but I suspect it's just that soon we all will know what Melania has known all along: Trump is a fraud.
5
If Grandpa called himself "the chosen one" and said he wanted to buy Greenland, we all would - at the very least - take his car keys away.
5
The idea that these people have to pretend that our Emperor isn't naked in his ignorance, his narcissism, his allegiance to Russia and his greed, shows the discipline of diplomacy. He might still be able to fool 40% of Americans but 100% of non Americans see a lunatic leader comfortable with nudity. He's a carnival, that no one asked for, that hits town, does terrible business and leaves more mess than memories. He is both carnival barker and one of the main attractions. Step right up and see the chosen one, the stable genius himself, cut a country in half.
2
Trump's body language, and for a long time now, says "I am a very troubled man"
2
Probably hard of hearing. Melania likely said, Trudeau and he heard Jun Un.
Slipping? Yes. Stable genius is well on his way out to pasture.
2
The proof that Donald Trump is tremendous with respect to tremendousness in foreign policy??
Why, because he has "a very good brain!" And because he's "said a lot of things," of course!
One need only to refer to remarks he made during an interview in March 2016:
-----
"Asked on MSNBC’s 'Morning Joe' who he talks with consistently about foreign policy, Trump responded, 'I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.'
'I know what I’m doing and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people and at the appropriate time I’ll tell you who the people are,' Trump said. 'But my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff.'"
-----
The fact that the guy's brains are mashed potatoes has been obvious to me for a few years, so I guess right now we are just seeing Donald Trump just being Donald Trump? Dismally poor POTUS material then, as now.
3
let me quote from aretha franklin :
"I ain't no psychiatrist, I ain't no doctor with degrees, but it don't take too much i.q. to see what you're doing to me"
1
Lets face it. Americans love doddering old men who are losing their marbles. Even when Ronald Reagan was showing early signs of Alzheimer's dementia during his 2nd term in office Americans still referred to him as the "Great Communicator". And compared to Trump, the delusional incoherent babbler, Reagan with obvious cognitive impairment made more sense than Trump does today.
2
Occam's Razor: Our excuse for a president is not mentally ill, he simply doesn't know what he is doing. I don't understand why that has been so hard to grasp. We try the same rationalizing with white terrorists -- they must be crazy. It's amazing how we bend over backwards to explain the incompetance and evil of some men. Why do we do that?
1
In his book, "The Art of the Deal," written over 30 years ago, Trump says quite candidly, "The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies... I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration - and a very effective form of promotion."
This says everything you need to know about Trump's presidency. Nothing we have seen in his presidency should be the smallest surprise to anyone who has been following him throughout his career. After a lifetime of of exaggerating, bending the truth, and outright lying as the basis for how he does business and lives his life, it is small wonder that he is no longer able to distinguish lies from truth anymore.
Whether Trump has early dementia or is simply evil makes no difference at this point. "You belong to your father, the devil... When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44 NIV).
1
Fair or not, the appearance of mental deterioration is business has usual for Trump.
1
And the stock market goes up and down based upon what Trump is saying on the morning tweet line. Who is the bigger fool, Trump or those who take him at his word or lack of?
1
Ivanka met with Kim.
Donnie keeps getting his sister-daughter-wives confused!
3
Anybody with a sense of reality can see and hear Trump is out of touch with reality as he tries to spin everything as a message of how absolutely wonderful he is on every issue . Trump lies and spins in the Orwellian style screaming up is down and red is blue cause I said so. Trump wants to be our dictator in the mode of his hero and role model Putin who seems to have him compromised. All news that is true but he does not like is called fake news like other dictators he would like to crush the free press. Trump is using Barr his flunky to go after his political enemies and in a show of loyalty unlike Comey he is having 30k party at Trump's bribe center and hotel.
2
Contact your senator and ask him or her to push hard for a mental health evaluation of Donald Trump. Given all of his issues when speaking --- word substitution, mixing up his ancestry relationships (father born in Germany. Nope, born in the Bronx. Melania has gotten to know Kim well), word shortening into nonsense words, and on and on ---- we are being led by a man with rapid mental deterioration. Somebody expert and professional needs to take leadership in evaluating his mental status
2
I understand that after listening to Trump's erratic, and insulting comments about hurricanes and Puerto Rico, Santeros on the island got together and cast the worse evil spell on the Traitor sitting in the Oval Office. That is why hurricane Dorian, barely a tropical storm in the Caribbean, is now predicted as a major hurricane, aiming for Mar-a-Lago. As someone said once: "It's not good to fool Mother Nature."
5
The man is bonkers--no more--no less.
1
Donald trump is the voice, the heart of the Republican Party
4
Trump never said that Melania met Kim Jong-un, but that she has gotten to know him. These are two different things, but when you're in the business of sliming people then the conflation comes in very handy.
I hope you will not be surprised when Trump next time will call you (again) Fake News. You earned it.
So he lost $3-5B? How much you wanna bet it shows up on his next years tax return as a loss?
2
Gail observes: "Guess how Trump and Bolsonaro get along. Great pals? Bingo."
President Trump has never met an authoritarian he didn't like. Except maybe that guy down in Venezuela, but he's a Communist.
3
How can you have "second thoughts" when you don't have first ones?
4
They’re both the same.
"Paging Dr. Grisham. Paging Dr. Stephanie Grasham."
Oops, that's Spin Dr. Stephanie Grisham.
1
Besides the undeniable fact that he's slipping down the rabbit hole (and taking US along with him), just what is Melania's security clearance level???
2
“And while the first lady hasn’t met him [Kim], the president feels like she’s gotten to know him too.” Stephanie Grisham has a similar comment ready for those asking about Papa President's relation to his youngest son, Barron [you know, the one whose birth he wasn't around for because he had serious business with Stormy D at the time]. It goes like this: “And while the President hasn’t met Barron, the first lady feels like he’s gotten to know him too.”
Thanks as always, Gail Collins. And sometime could you fill us in on the Society of Steves surrounding Trump--Mnuchin, Miller, and the female version, Stephanie G? How often does the Society meet? Do the members pay dues? Do they have any special privileges?
2
Enough with the Trump is crazy columns. He is and has always been an uneducated grifter who is not fit to be president. The real story is the Republican party who continue to support him. They need to be called out again and again.
4
Do you think Sean Spicer has an awed admiration for what comes out of Stephanie Grisham's mouth?
1
Do we really need any more proof? I think not.
2
“He has no second thoughts, no second thoughts.” His first thoughts aren’t worth anything, either.
2
Praying for a nervous breakdown. Praying, praying, praying for a nervous breakdown.
1
“Delusions, mood swings, behavior changes, withdraw from society, experiences quick-shifting moods that are out of your control, skin problems, sleep disorder” these are all long term effects of taking Adderall. We know nothing about Trump from his taxes, his groping, his physicals, his money, to his friends like Epstein. Trump has created his own deep state. Vote Vote Vote
3
those who have already chosen Trump over all should have no problems with anything he does. He isnt acting like a President of all Americans-just of his chosen group. God Save America and let MAGA stand for Make America Good Again
1
All this analysis, ....what’s the point anymore?
40% of Americans and Moscow Mitch still support the Guy!
In 2020, anybody but Trump!
1
Same ole Trump.
Funny that he admits he's a bad businessman losing $3B to $5B. Not that its true, but he's lying AND saying he's a bad businessman.
1
Ms. Collins wrote "slipping", I say slipped, past tense. He is certifiably unfit for office, but that's old news.
His despicable insults are getting tiresome and his daily lies are beyond counting.
One would think that the president of the greatest country in the world would be a roll model. However, in this case, no way. Good thing hurricane Dorian skirted Puerto Rico because all they would get would be paper towels.
1
So what? Maybe his mind started slipping when he became more popular for saying outrageous stuff on Howard Stern and the Apprentice. Seems like every Internet troll is part of his “base,” the same people who love dog fighting and movies with an explosion a minute. If your dad started decorating the house like a gold palace your friends would avoid him like the plague or come over to gawk - he plays to the gawkers. Rome had Commodus, we have Trump. Pretending bad taste and crooked deals are dementia doesn’t make them better.
2
Watching Trump at the G7, it struck me that he often sounds and looks really stoned. If you watch him in those group settings, he's often looking off in some direction away from the center of attention, seemingly in his own little mental world. His non-sensical word salad is typical of the stoners I used to know back in my college days.
1
Gail, you failed to mention the "great parking" Trump plugged for Doral, which is important considering that all the other G7 heads of state and their entourages will be driving to Miami.
2
“I have second thoughts about everything.”
Including business loans and wives?
Two things. The first, regarding Republicans (including those who blessed us with Sarah Palin) and middle-of-the-roaders who say they can't vote for an Elizabeth Warren. Consider only what the damage this man can do to the environment if he remains in office an additional six years (not to mention anything a president Warren would propose would have to wean its way through Congress). Second, Trump's "negotiating strategy" is to keep people off balance by saying outlandish things and then responding to their reaction ("I always have second thoughts"). In this case, he wants us to imagine his father as a "quality immigrant" and not someone who was close to the Queens KKK.
2
Sorry if it’s not fair, but it’s the only answer — they’re both the same.
Great column, but I suppose it was simply due to lack of space that you didn’t mention one of the highlights of his duplicity at the G7. Of course, he couldn’t attend the climate change meeting, since he had already scheduled meetings with Germany and India — both of whom, of course, were in that meeting. But we have the cleanest water, the cleanest air!!
1
This president cannot string together words to make a sentence that makes sense. He uses the same type of descriptive word strings no matter what it is being discussed. He has a hard time stating on topic unless he is using a teleprompter and then too he wanders. How is he going to debate an opponent if one decides to primary against him? Will they like Mueller, give him the questions in advance so his lawyers can answer for him, then post the answers to the teleprompter? He could not answer a simple question from Yamiche Alcindor without going on the attack. How is he going to debate someone as sharp as Kamala Harris, Elisabeth Warren or for that matter Joe Biden. Perhaps he will just stick out his tongue and start calling names.
No doubt about it, mental deterioration is proceeding. Of course, this deterioration is starting from a pathetically low starting point.
2
He's nuts. Everyone knows that. His supporters don't care. The more interesting question is why don't his supporters care.
4
Forget that the Constitution says the President can't receive money from foreign governments, why would the other members of the G7 want to meet at a Trump property?
1
Re this, I think Trump just forgot that Ivanka, and not Melania, met Kim"
'Not only had he come to know Kim well, Trump told reporters, “the first lady has gotten to know Kim Jong-un and I think she’d agree with me, he is a man with a country that has tremendous potential.”'
Of course, this doesn't make the situation any better ... just different.
1
The only good thing I can think of to say about Trump is that he’s not yet strapped his dog to the roof of his car.
2
This would be funny were he—and far too many in power—not tragically disturbed.
1
Great article. But I see many writers are simizing that our president of the CSA has been deteriorating recently. I beg to differ. This failure in every aspect of humanity has been this way his entire life. I am confident that if we were to see his school grades and tax returns we would see someone mediocre at best, a scoundrel and con man. His love of murdering dictators is especially problematic. His myopic supporters and spineless Republicans in the senate and bloodthirsty billionaires are abetting this monster anti-American traitor at their moral peril. A pox on all of them.
1
He is getting worse, and I believe it's stress and the fact that he does not feel adored (in his mind he is the chosen one, after all ) It's bad enough that the Republicans shamelessly allow this demented man to continue in his position. But where are the Democrats in speaking up about his state of mind? I see nothing coming out of Pelosi and company. They should be bringing all of these instances into the public forum and getting them in the archives. It's a real National Emergency!
2
The situation is worse than that he is losing it mentally. Everything is working for him. He is emboldened and there doesn't seem to be a force to stop him. It might make for fun reading all the wacky things he says and does, but from his point of view he is a genius negotiating the way he knows how. There is absolutely no problem, ask Melania.
2
If Melania talked with the Donald about "world affairs," it must have been through the use of Morse Code or Snap Chat. Everyone in DC knows that Melania does not live at the White House but rather with her son and parents (the Chain Migration folks) in Northern Virginia. While Melania's knowledge of North Korea politics could fit on the head of a pin, as could his, you can imagine that being with Donald as he goes to bed at 7 PM and has hamburgers and diet cokes on a tray is not exactly Melania's style. Nor is being at the WH at 3 AM as Trump madly tweets about inane subjects.
What wife would tolerate that nonsense when she's too busy planning for the White House Christmas?
4
Speaking of Melania knowing, or not knowing Kim Jong-un … I assume that Melania does not keep a diary of her time in the White House, as so many other First Ladies have done, so we'll never really know, will we ...
Let’s go through the facts — real facts, not his fake ones. He’s 73, obese, doesn’t exercise and hasn’t since high school, likes McDonald’s and double servings of ice cream. That diet and routine screams hardening of the arteries — and of course, that would be in the brain as well. He brags about his great genetics but his father had Alzheimer’s. Now add increasing lies and befuddlement, outbursts and anger. Add the real and legitimate stress he’s been under — the Mueller investigation, the various House investigations, Deutschbank having to admit to having his taxes, the trade war he’s waging with China that he clearly doesn’t understand and has to end if he doesn’t want the stock market to tank. It’s a miracle he hasn’t collapsed. But in a way, he is. The merciful action would be the 25th Amendment.
3
“... Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin came up with: ‘He has no second thoughts, no second thoughts.’”
So true! One can’t have second thoughts if one doesn’t have first thoughts.
1
Deteriorating by the hour!
1
It is the mental health of millions of people who know all this and still support him that worries me.
4
Funny but it doesn’t do anything for us. Why bother?
Gail, this would be a tremendously funny column if only it were fiction. #sad
Even if the cheese is slipping further from the cracker, Trump's hardcore corps will not flag in its fealty to the liege and so follow along with every convolution and fabrication without question or quaver. The bottle blond leading the battle blind, as it were.
It's not the leader who scares me, it's the followers with the guns awaiting orders.
3
Ivanka is the sweet young thing who has gotten to know the North Korean megalomaniac. Trump cannot tell his daughter from his wife. Mental illness? No. Bad memory? Yes. Wishful thinking? Trump has thought of Ivanka as First Daughter and confused her with the First Lady since Melania chose to stay in New York.
Neither Ivanka nor Melania had any business going to North Korea for diplomatic reasons. The family affair that is the Trump administration is the joke on us. Ethical considerations flew out the window along with Trump's judgment when he was inaugurated.
2
It's The Madness of King Donald...
We've all watched the toll the presidency takes on men of far greater intelligence and mental stamina than Donald Trump. Barack Obama went into the White House a young man and emerged 8 years later graying at the temples and in need of (so far) a 2 year rest.
Trump was already half a whack job when he was elected. I still remember some of the first articles written about him focused on his clinical psychological issues. After 2+ years up in his fur covered room, eating nothing but a steady diet of Big Macs and Fox News the man has become completely unhinged. We now enter the phase of his presidency where we stop dropping our mouths open in collective astonishment at his behavior, and begin the soft probing of his mental stability.
We are the classic case of the frog in the pot. The water is starting to boil, but we think its just a warm bath. I shudder to think what this lunatic will do as a lame duck second term president. All I can say is keep him away from guns, and stay off Fifth Avenue during the daylight hours.
3
Worse-definitely worse.
Trump has been on a long downhill slide from day one.
Time to move on - Time to ignore trump and his constant lies.
There are a number of intelligent, hard working people who want to be president. Many of them have great ideas that will move the country forward and help repair the damage trump has done. Time for journalists to start treating trump like the unintelligent, self serving, pathological lying bully that he is - Ignore him, and move on.
3
Former GOP congressman Joe Walsh said it to George Stephanopoulos on national television, and I believe it; "he's [Trump's] nuts."
Republicans in Congress all deserve to be voted out of office for refusing to state the obvious and act on it. They don't practice governance, they practice tribalism. They all need to go, along with their demented leader.
2
Is there any more proof that this thing is totally Looney Tunes?
Why is he still allowed in the white house? Why is he allowed to roam free?
2
Thank you, Gail Collins, for this hilariously funny piece. Oh, wait...what she is describing is actually true! Let’s get to the next election before this horribly unfit, unintelligent, incoherent, mentally deteriorating person does even more damage.
2
The most dangerous clown the world has ever known.
With approval ratings in the 80's with Republicans + Electoral College 'protections' enshrined by our Founding Fathers....
I fear we will be a witness to his long slide for another 5 1/2 years.
There is no silver lining here. It's simply all bad...all the time.
4
It’s more than wheels coming off the bus. He is sleep deprived and seeing foreign language everywhere is very disorienting. Give him a break. Would you be able to sleep knowing the Chinese have developed a distaste for American grain? That the bank holds the dirt on you and will be assisting the DA shortly. The man is lucky and his luck is running out. He will get worse as the panic sets in that he is a cornered animal.
Maybe he can do the full lunatic defense of I’ve got dementia!
2
25th Amendment.
1
Are we going to wait until Trump does something truly horrible (as if caging children isn’t enough by God), and then say, “Well in hindsight we should have acted sooner”? Does that sound familiar to anyone? This man is completely unhinged. Period. Plain as the nose on his face. How many times do we have to say it? When in the blank is something going to be done? What’s the 25th Amendment for if not for now?
Thanks, Gail, as always you’re spot on.
3
It was obvious while he was running for president that there was something wrong with this man when his "doctor" proclaimed that he would be the “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” At that moment it became clear that Trump and his doctor were a pair of loons.
2
I blame the GOP for enabling, protecting, lying, and literally crawling on their bellies for this sorry excuse for a president. But with Trump’s declining mental capacities the question who is really running the country?
1
Whatever Trump is mentally, what is anyone doing about it?
Democrats versus Republicans is not sufficiently useful for life in the Twilight Zone. American politics is dead and Trump is the proof of that,
“DEPLORABLE”. A loaded word.
Two meanings, both related.
The first one we have often heard.
Disgraceful. Wretched. Hated.
The second one: Lamentable.
It sounds more empathetic.
Unfortunate. Regrettable.
Both meanings quite pathetic.
The GOP and Donald Trump
are worthy of condemnation.
His voters, though, like Forrest Gump,
deserve full contemplation.
Trump is reckless. He is mean.
His mind has gone astray.
The GOP, as we have seen,
supports him all the way.
Trump’s voters, though, they have a chance
to show what they’re about.
They either with this devil dance
or they will vote him out.
1
So what do I think? His character is rotten. He has no conscience. He cares nothing for the oath of office he took or his responsibility to all of the inhabitants of our nation. He cares only about wealth, just watch the last few minutes of the crazy news conference with Macron. Obviously, he presents as one with mental deterioration as well, confused. He has no understanding of the nature of things to begin with (its all fake he says), nor the consequences of his actions day in and day out. He is cruel. He is a bully and violent, hurling insults at most everyone, even racist tropes. He has threatened "obliteration" of countries, threatens the world's security and economy at every turn, runs his administration like a New York underworld boss. He wants to be like Putin and the autocratic rulers he worships, and he has nationalist ambitions equal to the worst of fascism since World War II ended. So all of the above: no character, evil, mentally and morally diminished, cruel, untethered to reality, a threat to every human being on earth and the rest of it too.
4
If he's actually completely lost it - which is actually old news (and no Mr. president it's not fake because your all-about-me I'm-an-expert-on-everything is on tape and on more tape and more)....if he's so horrible no one can take him seriously (and he has launch codes) WHY IS THE GOP AWOL...SILENT.... and ....COMPLICIT? As long as the checks and balances check out the base and billionaires won't think twice about the blind loyalty
1
His brain has shrunk, has become perforated throughout, and now functions less each day. The staff are fully functional and destroying our government a little more each day.
That’s all. Just a terrible, terrible disaster for our world.
1
“To mental health professionals like me, the red flags are waving wildly,” wrote the psychologist John Gartner.
Erm...to the casual observer on the street, the red flags are waving wildly...
1
If I were making this kind of mistakes, my wife would concernedly ask me if we should take an alzheimer test.
2
My father has had dementia for years. The symptoms are very similar: confabulation, angry outbursts, making things up, orneriness, personality changes, and a sense of doom. Trump is off the charts on the dementia scale.
Trump has always been a pants on fire liar, but this behavior is beyond acceptable. Seriously, Republicans, is this worth your reputation in the history books? Oh yeah, you haven’t funded schools in decades, so no new books will be given out anyway.
2
Experts in 2017:
"The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President"
by Bandy X. Lee
Laymen in 2019:
Gee, I wonder if DJT is nuts. What do the experts say? They should speak out. If they did, we could act.
1
I know it's become popular, and quite amusing, to ponder Trump's mental decline. May I suggest an alternative theory? Trump learned from the crooks who taught him everything--his own dad and Roy Cohn--to say anything and create chaos to keep the buyer unbalanced. He's doing that, but on a much larger stage and on obviously much more crucial subjects. He still acts like he's getting you a deal on the marble countertops. He's always lied and said stupid things to distract, deflect and deny--but now those stupid things involve nuking hurricanes. And now the world pays attention.
2
There's a song about Trump. "Slip Slidin Away".
It’s been apparent for some time that the guy’s off his nut. There is no way for him to regain said nut. The GOP knows this and have chosen to rally behind him like he represents some perverse second coming, putting us directly in harm’s way. This is treachery IMO.
2
"...a pathetic one-page statement and an agreement to raise $22 million to help battle the Amazon rainforest fires."
Pitiful. That's less than Trump University paid for defrauding its students.
But let's not pave an off ramp for Donald. He is perfectly competent to stand trial.
1
It sounds like President Trump needs a neuropsych exam and MRI of the brain. You can't have "second thoughts" on something, when you never had "first thoughts" on it in the first place.
To knowingly tell a good lie, you need to have arranged a higher cognitive function in the cerebral cortex, and therefore, since Trump knowingly lies as he breaths, I'll really start worrying about his mental health when he starts telling the truth accidentally.
Sad to say the failed, bankrupt and corrupt businessman succeeded in becoming president of the US. Now if we can only dislodge him. . .
Trump has dementia and it’s getting worse. His family are too busy propping him up to serve another day so they can make more money. He slipped on a circular staircase at the G 7 and grabbed Boris Johnson to steady himself. He drags his feet.
Media needs to step up and expose this.
2
The terrifying had become normal...we now expect Trump to continuously lie.
And look ahead: the orange ogre is surely studying the machinations of Boris Johnson, and and finds in him a willing cohort in crimes against Democracy.
1
While trump is truly the worst, least stable president our country has ever had, the situation would not be nearly so dangerous were it not for Mitch McConnell and the GOP who twist their integrity, patriotism and honor into knots trying to cover for this insane man.
3
He isn't losing it. He never had it. He has always behaved this way in his insulated world of Daddy's money. Never been held to account for anything he sees the walls are closing in on Individual 1 and he is going to get really desperate if things go further south and he loses the election. Just saying...y'all haven't seen anything yet. The Crazy Train is just leaving the station. Buckle up, America.
1
The question is whether Trump is and always has been a vast lunatic in a box, a box whose walls he's bit by bit eroding as he fires and drives away all advisors with any shred of an understanding of governance, or he is a deteriorating lunatic that began nutty but who has now grown into a Baobab tree full of goats eating seed pods of ideas that are being digested and then ejected as nuts of US policy.
Aging Baobab or box? How can we tell the competing theories apart?
2
Gail is being too kind. He is not crazy or sick. He is just a liar and con man who believes if he says it, it will come true. And that is more dangerous.
2
Trump has to have First Thoughts before he can have Second Thoughts.
Trumps followers eat this up. The crazier he acts. The more they love it.
What’s next Gail are you going to rehash Regan’s gaffes? Biden has clearly exceeded all expectations as to his verbal bungling. After awhile it stops being entertaining, but like all liberals, you don’t know when to leave the party,
Trump's neurons are not connected to each other, hence, his right knows not what the left is saying...or doing. In fact, most regretfully, he lost the ability to tell fact from fiction, given that he lies whenever he opens his mouth. He also forgot that, to be a good liar, one needs to have an excellent memory so not to tell the truth by mistake (no joke, it has occurred, to Trump's embarrassment), not that he has ever apologized for his blunders. However ignorant he may appear, he remains a superb demagogue; and that, to him, and his minions, is what counts.
2
I feel like all opinion writers at NY Times are either obsessed with Trump or have become intellectually lazy to not see beyond Trump. Between Collins, Bruni, Goldberg (?) Stephens, Edsal, all I get is Trump, Trump and Trump. We all know what Trump is saying and doing. Can we please read about something else.
Thank you.
Trumpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Grumpy Dumpty had a big fall
All the “ king’s” horses and all the “king’s” men
Ignored his outrageous and dangerous actions as they counted their money and clung to power.
1
Oh yeah, he’s so wacko that at least 35% of the country goes along with everything he says. I think that is the bigger issue. What does that say about the mental health of our country?
“My father is German … born in a very wonderful place in Germany.” .....Fred Trump was born in the Bronx. “To mental health professionals like me, the red flags are waving wildly,” wrote the psychologist John Gartner.
Alarming on two fronts: Trump is increasingly showing serious mental irregularities, and his supporters completely disregard it. It used to be “take him seriously, but not literally”. What happens when you can’t take either one? Then you’re in uncharted waters with the Mad Hatter for a captain.....and he‘s got the nuclear codes. Trump would rather schmooze with Kim Jong Un and Putin than our long time democratic allies. Our present national/world situation demands a serious, intelligent, and honorable President, who commands respect. We have exactly the opposite.
4
Next year we'll be having the G2 (Russia and the US) in crazy town. I have crazytown.
1
Trump is assuredly a megalomaniac, but what he says is pure calculation. Invoking the names Mar-a Lago, Bedminster, Trump Turnberry in Scotland, Trump Towers, and the Doral appeals to the poshlust that his benighted followers think represents success, "class" and what they laspire to be. They don't carte who in his family was born in Germany, they just know that it is a country from which white people come.
What is truly alarming is the Republican Party’s paralysis. They are unctuous weasels, no offense to weasels, who place their power ahead of their constitutional obligations.
2
I laughed my way through Gail's article on Trumps mental stability. Crazy or crazy like a fox. I must admit, it is fun to watch.
If we think Trump is "bad" now, wait until he loses and is still in the WH/POTUS for apx 60 days from Nov 2020 until Jan 20,2021.
As they say, "you aint seen nothing yet!"
How did we get here?
There is nothing new in this Trumperie rhetoric, or tripplespeak, or gibberish, whatever you want to call it. He learned this game years back and he can't lose... or at least you can't win or pin him down or prove him wrong or to be lying, as you have to dispel not one or two, but ten lies, half liesjoking and irrelevant nonfacts before you realize he's spouted twenty more, or already left the message parlor.
If you read the introduction to David Johnson's book about Trump, it includes an interview transcript of Trump responding to rumors that his father or grandfather participated in a kKK rally and riot in NYC back in the good ol' days. It's verty telling, and a brilliant introduction to Trumpery.
Both the same!
President Paul Deschanel of France in 1920 was similarly "touched." It was barely managed by his staff until the day came when he greeted the newly appointed British Ambassador in the Elysee Palace wearing nothing but his presidential sash.
The closer Mr. Trump gets to the election, the more bizarre his behavior will become as the mad furies make war on his already fragile psyche. Then the day will come when he greets a delegation from Peoria in the Oval Office wearing nothing but his tighty-wighties. Pity we don't have sashes.
1
It's like a bit for an improv troupe.
"Okay, Joe, you're the president and Donna you're press secretary. Now Joe, say the most outrageous thing you can think of, and Donna you do the spin. Got it? Scene."
He never wanted to be a real president. He wanted to be, like, a pretend president, doing all the "cool" president things and not the grueling everyday grind the office demands. Since he is frozen in adolescence, i.e., his infantile sexualization of women, dealing with troops as if they were plastic soldiers, seeing things through the distorted lens of a teen, he was not prepared for what "grownup" behaviour was expected of him. The presidency is not parades, red carpets, bowing and fawning citizens, unbridled power, endless galas and never-ending golf, power suits disguising weakness, the military saluting you and according you respect you haven't earned. Most presidents gray with gravitas. This one is a orange crayon melting into a puddle in the noonday sun. He has not become an elder statesman, rising to the challenge, but rather regressing to childhood where tantrums are de rigueur and you sign your name with really big letters because you haven't developed manual dexterity and you think the world revolves around you. Arrested development.
4
It seems pretty clear that Trump has co-morbid personality disorders. He exhibits characteristics of both Antisocial Personality Disorder, and Narcissistic PD. --all PDs include a lack of empathy and inability to feel remorse in their descriptions.
The Mayo Clinic’s definition is a good one: “A personality disorder is a type of mental disorder in which you have a rigid and unhealthy pattern of thinking, functioning and behaving. A person with a personality disorder has trouble perceiving and relating to situations and people. This causes significant problems and limitations in relationships, social activities, work and school.
In some cases, you may not realize that you have a personality disorder because your way of thinking and behaving seems natural to you. And you may blame others for the challenges you face."
Trump is clearly ramping up his disgraceful behavior. One of the worst things his administration has done is sending parents of severely ill children receiving treatment in American hospitals a letter telling them that they are no longer eligible for that medical intervention. Going after sick children and babies is about as low as a human can get!
4
Trump embodies the raised middle finger of his voters.
That's it. All that deep stuff about the ignored white working and middle class? Twaddle.
I used to think Trump's supporters would "catch on" on to him, the scales would fall from their eyes, and they'd see what he is: A Carnival Barker Con Man who knows a bunch of marks when he sees them - his voters.
But, instead, I was the one who had to "catch on' to something. That is, his voters aren't fooled by Trump. They know he's full of it and his cheese isn't entirely on the cracker.
They don't care. The thrill of him embodying their raised middle finger on their behalf is worth any cost to this nation to endure him, and, he's "owning" the Libs.
That's it. Look no deeper than that.
Still, I can state to a reasonable degree of observational and auditory certainty that Trump's faculties are in question. There is no question, however, that he's an incompetent, ignorant , bigoted, dangerous person who should not be the President of the United States.
3
“Slipping” is a euphemism befitting the office, but not the man.
Sadly, I believe the G7 should become the G6 until Trump steps down (one way or another). It would save the rest of the "G" members the embarrassment of being of being immobilized by the fear of doing anything that could raise his ire and it would save the US from having to apologize his antics. Just think of the savings if we do not have to foot the bill for a Mar-a-Lagos waste of time in 2020.
Sadly, the only thing this year's G7 produced is free ad time for the president to go into auto brand-selling mode, which was the only time he stirred from his extremely dour countenance during the entire weekend.
Going into that meeting was like sending him to clean the prison toilets with a toothbrush -- His petulant, mealy-mouthed expression in all the photos spoke volumes. He banged on repeatedly about why his 'best friend' Putin was not allowed in because he knew nobody at G7 liked him.
Taxpayers should be fuming that they had spent money to send him there at all just so all he could do was advertise Doral to the world.
Trump is not getting worse. He's just getting familiar -- His limitations are bared to the bone and he knows it so he tries to spin it and distract us. If he wins in 2020, expect the every G7 up to 2024 to run exactly the same, but perhaps with Putin backslapping him heartily.
This is classic Trump control. He lies, deceives, changes his mind, fails to tell his subordinates, pleads for sympathy from supporters, etc. all in the name of keeping everyone guessing.
Or is the POTUS showing signs of early stages of Alzheimer's?
Good thing you have that great system of checks and balances to protect your democracy from such a conundrum, a president come unhinged.
420
@I'e the B'y
L'rnd it from England.
7
@I'e the B'y
"While you're at it, why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it!" ; )
20
@I'e the B'y
I’m guessing that’s sarcasm, because those checks and balances are pretty much meaningless to the republican regime in power at the moment.
The overall goal of the GOP is to turn this nation into a banana republic where graft and bribery are the only means of governance.
50
Was it Judge Scalia who said interior decorating was rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs? I know, some of you commentators are medical professionals. But is this really the peer reviewed forum you folks work in?
Whatever happened to the ancient Palace Guard that finally got tired of Caligula and Nero? Must we continue to wait?
4
Is what we learn about the goings-on at the WH much different than what we heard in "Bananas?"
Esposito: From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. Silence! In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now . . . 16 years old!
Fielding Mellish: What's the Spanish word for straitjacket?
1
I used to love America. i.e., used to.
7
Mental deterioration without a doubt.
Congress should mandate that the President and Vice President undergo an annual psychological assessment by a certified board of experts. The findings should be reported to Congress and the Cabinet.
5
I think absolutely is showing signs of dementia. Verbal ability is greatly impoverished, problem solving ( couldn’t figure out how to close an umbrella so dropped it and walked away) is visibly poor, and now I think accelerated lying. I would call this type of “lying” confabulation. It is a medical term associated with some dementias where people simply create stories out of whole cloth because they can access factual truth anymore. This could be what confabulation looks like in a habitual formerly strategic liar.
15
Trump attacked Puerto Rico as "one of the most corrupt places on earth" -- when Hurricane Dorian was about to impact its American citizens.
Trump projecting again -- obviously the most corrupt place on earth is the governing office of Trump Inc.
16
My prayer is that Trump will crack up so obviously that even McConnell will have to notice. Between the megalomaniacal and other bizarre delusions (I am the second coming of the Lord), pretty soon the most intransigent Evangelical will have to notice.
7