Trump's Mental State in Decline: Time for Honest Assessment
Rambling speeches, a highly volatile temperament, and brazen narcissism have become hallmarks of Donald Trump's presidency. His behaviour becomes much clearer if we acknowledge one uncomfortable truth: the president's mental faculties are deteriorating. This reality, writes Alan Rusbridger, demands urgent public discourse as the American constitution strains under unprecedented pressure.
The Constitutional Crisis Nobody Foresaw
The founding fathers crafted remarkable safeguards, but their imagination failed to anticipate a president who would wield immense power while potentially being mentally unwell. We now inhabit a moment captured by WB Yeats' haunting lines: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." Trump's second coming has brought creeping acknowledgement that he might be either mad or senile. As coherence unravels in his mind, chaos spreads through global affairs.
While "mad" and "senile" lack clinical precision, the symptoms are unmistakable. Even staunch supporters cannot conceal discomfort at his impulsivity, malignant narcissism, and erratic volatility. All but the deliberately blind recoil from the deranged consciousness streaming from his social media accounts at all hours. We witness his conspiracy-obsessed mindset, diminishing self-control, increasing detachment from reality, and frequent delusional claims. His emotional volatility and disregard for democratic norms provoke alarm, while disinhibition, blustering menace, vengeful rants, and foul-mouthed posturing signal abnormality.
The 25th Amendment's Inadequacy
Remarkably, many continue behaving as though this were normal. The craven keep heads down while pretending not to notice. Some feel ideologically compelled to make excuses. For everyone else, blunt honesty is overdue: the president appears mentally unstable. The 25th Amendment allows for removing unfit presidents, working adequately when George W. Bush temporarily transferred power during medical procedures. However, it proves inadequate today because it requires assent from cabinet members and legislators who have demonstrated neither courage nor independent instinct.
This represents the second oversight by the founding fathers. Having escaped mad King George III's rule, they feared creating an elected monarch. Consequently, they designed Congress as a presidential rival equipped with formidable checking powers. In practice, the 119th Congress has failed abysmally. The Supreme Court has been little better, until recently nodding along as though ideological loyalty overrode law itself. As Lord Sumption noted regarding its decision declaring Trump immune from prosecution: "If an ex-president is immune from criminal liability for trying to overthrow the constitution... one is bound to wonder what is left of the constitution."
Journalism's Dilemma: Sane-Washing Abnormal Behaviour
Much now depends on the fourth estate as the final power check. Trump has relentlessly attacked journalistic organizations through diminishment, denigration, control attempts, ridicule, threats, neutering, and lawsuits. He routinely mumbles "fake news" at reporters daring to challenge him. His disturbing defence secretary pick, Pete Hegseth, revealed intentions when suggesting an ally would soon curb CNN: "The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better."
How would coverage differ if journalists started from the premise that the president was mentally unwell rather than sane? This presents complex questions for American journalists trained in neutrality concepts that falter when confronting mental incapacity. Currently, journalists often grant Trump's pronouncements false coherence. They might signal "rambling" but otherwise normalize the abnormal through sane-washing.
Unvarnished Reality: From Geopolitics to Office Supplies
Objectively, Trump's recent performances defy tidying up. When a high-level cabinet meeting about the Iran war gets derailed for five minutes while the president discusses Sharpie pen preferences, that transcends mere "digression." It represents a flashing red warning light. Jumping from wartime geopolitics to office supplies is bizarre and irrational. Yet we're asked to marvel at supposed rhetorical mastery. Trump has rebranded his non-linear, free-associative word salad as "the weave," but we needn't grant him benefit of the doubt.
Consider this verbatim 2024 campaign excerpt attacking Kamala Harris: "She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it's – and I own a big building there – it's no – I shouldn't talk about this, but that's OK, I don't give a damn because this is what I'm doing. I should say it's the finest city in the world – sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can't do that. I don't care, you know? I lost billions of dollars, billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, 'What do you think you lost?' I said, 'Probably two, three billion. That's OK, I don't care.' They say, 'You think you'd do it again?' And that's the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don't know if you know. Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horribly. Andrew Jackson, they say, was the worst of all, that he was treated worse than any other president. I said, 'Do that study again, because I think there's nobody close to Trump.' I even got shot! And who the hell knows where that came from, right?"
This represents no unusually unhinged tirade. We simply rarely see such raw incoherence presented unfiltered. It typically gets sanitized by people subsequently treated with presidential contempt rather than gratitude. With anarchy loosed upon the world almost hourly, reality must be faced. Approximately thirty weeks remain before Congress might reassert power after midterm elections. The world's most powerful man lacks mental capacity for his office. We must cease pretending otherwise.
