In the final days of his presidency, Richard Nixon “came unglued”, said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. He reportedly became irrational and obsessive, making wild suggestions and rambling about his past triumphs. His son-in-law and adviser Ed Cox recalled that Nixon would wander the halls of the White House “talking to pictures of former presidents”.
Alas, it seems Donald Trump has reached similar depths of “self-destructive mania”. Witness his recent unhinged letter to Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, in which Trump implied that he was entitled to seize Greenland owing to Norway’s failure to award him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Where to begin? Norway’s government doesn’t choose the winner of the prize. Nor does it own Greenland. And Trump hasn’t, as he insisted, “stopped 8 Wars PLUS”, or anything close. “We have three years left with a mad king. It does not feel sustainable.”
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“Trump has the world’s most consequential case of untreated logorrhea,” said Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker. According to a new study, in this first year of his second term he has spoken 1,977,609 words in presidential appearances – 145% more than in the first year of his first term.
In his speech in Davos last week, he rambled on for a full hour and a half. In the course of his address he, among other things, explained that only “stupid people” buy wind turbines, and admitted that he had decided to raise tariffs on Switzerland because its prime minister – “a woman” – had “rubbed me the wrong way”. He also kept confusing Iceland and Greenland. Americans are somewhat inured to Trump’s “manic performance art”, but the stunned reaction of Europeans should be a wake-up call. Many there were openly asking: has this man lost his mind? Is he still capable of running the US?
‘Nuttier than a Payday candy bar’
In “a saner, better world”, Trump’s cabinet officials would be discussing invoking the 25th Amendment, said Jim Geraghty in National Review. But of course none of them would dare suggest he was unfit to discharge his powers. Nor did President Biden’s colleagues when he started zoning out in meetings and forgot the name of his defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, referring to him in an interview simply as “the black man”.
“After one president who went senile in office and another who is nuttier than a Payday candy bar, we can only conclude that the 25th Amendment of the Constitution is there for decoration.”
