Trump has never been sharp and his command of the language was weak at best. But he’s really not all there anymore and it’s clear that he’s being kept wrapped in a bubble by his staff so that he only hears what he wants to hear.
Aaron Rupar’s Public Notice (a newsletter well worth subscribing to) lays out the obvious today in a piece by Stephen Robinson:
Donald Trump’s recent interviews with Time and The Atlantic revealed a president who is completely unhinged and incoherent. Sadly, that’s not news. But what stood out is that Trump is consistently confused and disconnected from reality even on issues that are supposedly in his wheelhouse.
Trump has always been an ignoramus who masks his intellectual shortcomings with bombast and declarations of his own brilliance, but his rambling nonsensical responses in these latest interviews should set off alarms — especially in light of all the media attention and scrutiny Joe Biden received after his disastrous debate performance or when Special Counsel Robert Hur described him as “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
Trump, who turns 79 in June, is the oldest person ever elected president. His repetitive speech patterns, frequent use of empty phrases, and overall rambling discourse are too often graded on a curve.
White House officials and pandering Republicans might boast about Trump’s boundless energy in a manner that would shame North Korean state media, but the Time and Atlantic interviews tell a very different story.
Rancid word salad
Trump was especially all over the place during his Time interview.
Conducted on April 22, he probably could’ve anticipated being asked about his April 9 executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Homeland Security to investigate Christopher Krebs, former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. (Trump has never forgiven Krebs for correctly stating publicly that the 2020 election was secure and not in any way rigged.)
Shockingly, however, Trump didn’t a prepare a defense for his abuse of power. Time asked Trump, “You recently signed memos calling for an investigation of Chris Krebs, a top cybersecurity official in your first term. Isn’t that, though, what you accused Biden of doing to you?” Trump’s response to this question was totally incoherent.
I think Chris Krebs was a disgrace to our country. I think he was—I think he was terrible. By the way, I don’t know him. I’m not—I don’t think I ever met him. I probably saw him around. You know, I have people come in, like the other one. He came in, and he’s on CNN all the time as like an expert on Trump. I have no idea who he is. And Chris Krebs the same thing. I guess he probably said he knows me, but I have no idea. And you know, oftentimes I’ll have some people sitting right here, and behind them will be 10 or 15 people from their agency or their office, and they’ll stand there, and then all of a sudden, I’ll hear that like I’m, you know, they’re all time experts in me. I know very little about Chris Krebs, but I think he was very deficient.
As the transcript shows, Trump didn’t even attempt to answer the question posed to him. He often pretends to have never met someone he believes has spoken ill of him, but his situational amnesia is less effective as an explanation for why he’s weaponizing the government against Krebs.
He actually didn’t have any idea why he had fired Krebs. Stephen Miller put a piece of paper in front of him with the names Krebs and Taylor and a little note about what they’d allegedly done to him. The point was to show other Republicans that he would go after them with the Department of Justice. This week, they pulled Krebs’ “global traveller” designation because he’s “under investigation.”
Trump is only dimly aware of any of these details. All he knows is that a guy who said he didn’t win the 2020 election needs to be put in his place.
Later in the interview, after Trump boasted that Biden would have never given an extensive interview “because he was grossly incompetent,” Time reminded him that Biden had in fact done so, just last June. (Biden’s interview responses were far more ordered and disciplined than Trump’s improvisational fascist jazz performance.)
Notice Trump’s befuddled reaction:
We spoke to [Biden] last year, Mr. President.
Huh?
We spoke to him a year ago.
How did he do?
You can read the interview yourself.
Not too good. I did read the interview. He didn’t do well. He didn’t do well at all. He didn’t do well at anything. And he cut that interview off to being a matter of minutes, and you weren’t asking him questions like you’re asking me.
Biden’s interview was 35 minutes. Trump was either outright lying, hopelessly confused, or some combination thereof. In any event, it’s not a great look for a sitting president.
This wasn’t just an off day, either. On April 24, Trump sat for an interview with The Atlantic. Staff writer Michael Scherer asked him bluntly, “Should people be concerned that the nature of the presidency is changing under you?” Trump was unable to leave the answer at “no” without going on a rant about James Comey, Robert Mueller, and the supposed Russia “hoax.”
Look, in history, there’s nobody that’s been gone after like me. It may be harder for you guys to see because you’re on the other side of the ledger. But nobody’s been gone after like me. I didn’t realize it for a little while. I was told—when I fired [former FBI Director James] Comey, I was told that was a terrible, terrible mistake to fire him, that it’ll come back to haunt you. When I fired him, it was like a rock was thrown into a hornet’s nest. The whole thing went crazy in the FBI. And that’s where we found the insurance-policy statement. You remember the famous statement, “Don’t worry, he’s gonna lose. But if he doesn’t, we have an insurance policy”? The insurance policy was what they were doing.
Imagine if Kamala Harris had responded to a basic question about border security with a lengthy digression centering around her own obsessive personal grievances — it would’ve been the subject of non-stop cable news panels and newspaper op-eds. But for Trump, it was just a normal Thursday.
Read the whole thing. It’s a nice compendium of some of his worst recent moments. He’s not all there and I will never understand the impulse for the media to refuse to point it out. They sure seemed happy to grind Biden about his old age issues.
These examples really get me, from the ABC interview with Terry Moran this week:
That’s just his standard illiteracy and ignorance. But when you combine that with his growing senility it’s downright terrifying.
That’s encroaching dementia right there. Stubbornness about their misperceptions is a common symptom.