Trump's Lack of Mental Competency

Over the weekend, I collected ideas for posts and had at least five different topics prepared for today. The administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump is such that it will probably provide at least five more possible topics before today is over. This is an administration, and President specifically, that spews a firehose of nonsense and controversy with which it is almost impossible to keep up. So, for today, I am just going to go through the latest indications that we are being led by a mad king. This really is a case of the emperor having no clothes. Trump's addled brain is on clear display. But rather than doing something about it, his top advisors and most Republicans ignore what is plainly obvious and, instead, insist that Trump is brilliant. Someday, people will look back at this time and ask how it could have happened. It is happening because far too many people see personal advantage in arguing that a clearly naked emperor is dressed in beautiful clothing.

Speaking of beautiful clothing that is purely a figment of imagination, let's start with the artificial intelligence-generated picture that Trump posted on his Truth Social social media platform depicting him as the Pope. This happened just after Trump told reporters that he would like to be the Pope. Trump's MAGA cult members defended the picture as a joke. However, their senses of humor were strangely absent last year when Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer participated in an Internet meme that was wrongly interpreted as mocking communion. Many Catholics didn't see the humor in Trump's photo. The New York State Catholic Conference issued a statement condemning the picture and saying, "Do not mock us." Bishop Paprocki, the Bishop of Springfield, Illinois, wrote that Trump "mocks God, the Catholic Church, and the Papacy" and said that Trump had been "deeply offensive" to Catholics.

On April 25, Trump gave an interview to Time. The interview is full of evidence that Trump's brain is scrambled. For instance, at one point, he claimed that former President Joe Biden would not do an interview like Trump was doing. When told that Biden had done such an interview last year, Trump said that he had read the interview and Biden hadn't done well. Trump similarly contradicted himself regarding the wall between Mexico and the United States. Trump said that he had built "hundreds of miles of wall", something that is not true, but then went even further to say, "I completed the wall". This was actually in response to the question, "So you're not concentrating more power in the presidency?" What the wall has to do with that question will be left as an exercise for readers to discover. Later in the interview, when the topic of Trump's tariffs came up, he claimed that he had made many trade deals with other countries, even saying, "I’ve made 200 deals." In reality, there have been no deals. Trump couldn't remember having said that he would comply with a Supreme Court order regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father sent to El Salvador in error. When his statement was read back to him, he claimed "that’s not what my people told me—they didn’t say it was, they said it was—the nine to nothing was something entirely different." The unanimous Supreme Court ruling was about the Abrego Garcia case, and Trump clearly does not know even the basics of a very short and very clear Supreme Court decision.

On Sunday, Trump was interviewed on "Meet the Press". At one point, he was asked about his desire to take over Greenland and whether he would rule out the use of force. Trump's response was, "I don’t rule it out. I don’t say I’m going to do it, but I don’t rule out anything." As a reminder, Greenland is part of Denmark, a NATO ally. The suggestion that the United States would use force against a country as close to us as Denmark is simply extraordinary. This cannot be brushed off as a joke, either, because Trump was clearly not joking. Rather, it is further evidence of Trump acting as a mad king.

Also on Trump's "Meet the Press" appearance, he was asked whether he believes that he needs to uphold the Constitution. Trump's response was, "I don’t know." I am not sure how Trump could not know this as he took an oath to do exactly that. At any rate, Trump's issue appears to be less with the Constitution and more with courts that have been stopping many of his initiatives. Trump has argued that courts do not have the authority to stop him. Trump has already started ignoring Supreme Court decisions, including the one regarding Abrego Garcia. In a sane world, there would be multiple impeachment processes launched against Trump by now.

During Trump's first presidential term, his late-night or early-morning tweets became something of a joke. Many of us had to adopt the habit of checking Twitter first thing in the morning in order to see what crazy thing Trump had tweeted overnight. That tradition is now repeating with the substitution of Truth Social for Twitter. Last night Trump "truthed" that "I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands." This is insane on many levels. First of all, how would Trump determine where a movie is made? Is it where it was filmed, where it was edited, or the location of the entity that owned its rights? The value of a movie is not in the physical reel that may or may not cross borders. Moreover, if Trump were able to figure out how to put tariffs on foreign films, the U.S. is extremely vulnerable to retaliation. According to the Motion Picture Association, American movies produced "$22.6 billion in exports and $15.3 billion in trade surplus in 2023." According to Trump's [mis]understanding of international trade, that means that the U.S. has stolen $15.3 billion from other countries, and they would be justified in putting that level of reciprocal tariffs on U.S. goods.

Just an hour before his movie "truth", Trump "truthed" on another topic. This time, the Alcatraz prison that was closed in 1963 and is now a museum owned by the National Park Service. Trump wrote, "I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders." It would be interesting to know what triggered this idea, but given Trump's contemporaneous fixation on movies and his support from Clint Eastwood, maybe Trump recently watched "Escape from Alcatraz". The Alcatraz prison had been closed because it was very expensive to operate. According to Wikipedia, "A 1959 report indicated that the facility was over three times more expensive to run than the average American prison". Given the likely cost of rehabilitating the current museum and bringing it up to modern prison standards, it would probably be cheaper to build a new one from scratch. I am not aware of there being a current shortage of high-security prisons, so beyond Trump's possible jealousy of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele due to Bukele having a more notorious prison than Trump, I am not sure of the need for reopening Alcatraz as a prison.

Twice over the weekend, Trump was asked about his tariffs causing price increases. The first time, Trump responded by saying, "Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. So maybe the two dolls will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally." During the "Meet the Press" interview, Trump increased the permitted number of dolls, saying, "I'm just saying they don't need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don't need to have 250 pencils. They can have five." While many might agree that children don't need 30 dolls,  this is really trivializing the serious concern of many families about rising prices. Trump appears to be particularly oblivious about the reality of current prices. During the "Meet the Press" interview, Trump claimed that gas is "down to $1.98 in many states right now". CNN found that gas prices have actually increased since Trump was inaugurated. Similarly, according to "Rolling Stone," the current average price for a gallon of gas is $3.17 and no state has an average price of $1.98. "GasBuddy, a company that tracks gas prices at more than 150,000 gas stations nationwide, could find no gas station in the country selling gas at that price during the month of April." As for grocery prices which Trump also claimed have gone down, "Rolling Stone" reported that the Consumer Price Index has been increasing each month since Trump took office.

Also during the "Meet the Press" interview, Trump claimed that "We do very little business with Canada." In fact, as "Rolling Stone" reports, "Canada is America's second-largest trade partner and the top buyer of American exports". As is often the case with Trump, it is impossible to determine whether he is lying or simply ignorant of the facts. A year ago, when the stock market was performing well, Trump claimed that he deserved credit, despite it being the fourth year of the Biden administration. He "truthed", "THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK MARKET BECAUSE MY POLLS AGAINST BIDEN ARE SO GOOD THAT INVESTORS ARE PROJECTING THAT I WILL WIN, AND THAT WILL DRIVE THE MARKET UP". Now, with the stock market tanking, Trump claims, "This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s. I didn’t take over until January 20th." When asked on "Meet the Press" when this becomes the "Trump economy", Trump continued with the "tails he wins, heads Biden loses" formulation, saying, "It partially is right now. I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy."

Anyone who has paid attention to Trump over the years will surely be aware that he struggles to articulate a grammatically correct sentence and is often barely comprehensible. He also lies constantly. Much of what he says is later brushed off as jokes or trolling. In addition, the media has traditionally engaged in what I call "Trumpslating" and others describe as "sanewashing", in which Trump's unintelligible statements are translated by the media into clear language. Regardless, it is obvious that Trump lacks the mental acumen to be President. Whether he is offending Catholics, "truthing" the latest harebrained idea to cross his mind, or denying the impact of his economic policies, he does not appear to be connected to reality. Republicans have made much of Biden's mental state and the alleged cover-up of Biden's condition. But at least the country was fairly well run during that time. We did not have to worry about armed invasions of our close allies. There is no question about Trump's erratic behavior and questionable mental state. There is no cover-up. To the contrary, he displays his diminished mental capacity every day. What is extraordinary is the huge effort among many to simply deny what is obvious. Some say that Trump behaves this way to distract us from other issues. But in what world is our President's lack of mental stability something to be ignored? That should be an issue that grabs our attention.

Update: I was mostly joking about Trump getting his idea about Alcatraz from the movie "Escape from Alcatraz" which starred Clint Eastwood. However, it turns out that I might have been right.  A user on Bluesky writes, "I may have context for this! Last night WPBT in Palm Beach broadcast the 1979 Clint Eastwood film "Escape from Alcatraz."

Update 2: A Fox News reporter started a question for Trump by saying that Catholics were upset by the picture of Trump dressed as the Pope. Trump interrupted the reporter and said that Catholics were not upset but rather it was the fake news media. He said that Catholics loved it. He also claimed that he had nothing to do with the picture. That was despite the fact that he "truthed" the picture himself and the official White House X account also posted it.