There have been far too many episodes of Donald Trump exposing himself as mentally unfit to enumerate here. After all, there are books dedicated to the subject (like “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.”). Let’s just take the voters (as polled by Fox News) as proof that the nation has had enough of being governed by a sociopathic narcissist. Trump’s claim that he “aced” a cognition test notwithstanding, he is unarguably psychologically distancing from reality.
On Wednesday morning Trump mounted his customary Twitter defense with more than three dozen tweets before noon. But one in particular illustrated perfectly how badly his cognitive skills have deteriorated. Presumably he was responding to the criticism of his fascist deployment of faux federal law enforcers in Portland.Oregon, and other localities. But what he tweeted was an article in the “Moonie” Washington Times, written by Fox News senior legal analyst, Andrew Napolitano. The headline reads “How totalitarianism begins in the U.S.”
Andrew P. Napolitano: “Feds may not deploy police or military domestically unless the state governor requests it.” @judgenap #washtimesopedhttps://t.co/zOlK5VsyEN
— Washington Times Opinion (@WashTimesOpEd) July 23, 2020
It’s fair to say that Napolitano does not regard Trump’s hyper-aggressive tactics as an appropriate use of government authority. In fact, he castigated Trump’s phony “law and order” rhetoric saying that “there is nothing lawful or orderly about what these agents did. Their activities in Portland are unlawful, unconstitutional and harmful.” Some other choice excerpts are even more damning…
“Last weekend, with no notice or local consent, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent teams of agents — untrained in crowd control and wearing military fatigues — onto Portland’s streets. Their uniforms bore no governmental, administrative or personal names, just the word “Police” on masking tape. They descended upon the city in unmarked SUVs and began grabbing people indiscriminately off the streets, without regard to the person’s lawful presence or personal behavior.
“It was a kidnapping, not an arrest. An arrest is a lawful restraint by a legitimate government authority pursuant to a warrant issued by a judge specifically naming the person to be arrested, or pursuant to probable cause of crime personally observed by the arresting officers. Neither of these was the case in Portland.”
“The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires the government to protect speech, not assault those who exercise it. If these indiscriminate beatings and kidnappings are intended to deter folks from publicly dissenting, it is profoundly unconstitutional, counterproductive and will be costly to the federal government.”
You have to wonder why Trump retweeted this article. Did he just see the Washington Times logo and a photo of civil unrest and assume that it advanced his fear mongering campaign theme? Was he going only by the byline of a Fox News pundit? Clearly he didn’t bother to read any part of the article. If this isn’t more evidence of his declining mental state, it is at best proof of his lazy and negligent approach to his job.
Trump’s attitude toward Fox News has been a wild ride of contradictions. He frequently whines about not getting 100% adoring coverage from his Ministry of Propaganda. But he also rewards them with nearly every television interview he grants. On Wednesday morning he displayed both his appreciation and his hostility to Fox News. In one tweet, Trump congratulated them on their recent ratings performance. Then, just a couple of hours later, he complained that they are “Not even watchable.”
That is emblematic of the roller coaster psychoses that Trump is exhibiting. And it’s getting harder to find an hint of coherency in his outbursts. On Tuesday he tweeted a witch doctor who claimed that hydroxychloroquine is a cure for the coronavirus. It isn’t! He defended her even after it was revealed that she also believes that dream sex with demons causes illnesses and that space alien DNA is in many vaccines. What’s more, he told his staff that he is concerned about CIVID-19 fatalities now that it is taking the lives of “our people” in red states. And this is the “stable genius” that the Republican Party (and a smattering of cultists) continues to stand behind? They all need a dose of that space alien DNA – ASAP!
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.