Trump is shutting down as his world collapses around him

An analyst says President Donald Trump’s behavior raises alarming questions about whether the 79-year-old man is mentally fit to be president, most recently when he seemed unaware of the Supreme Court’s Wednesday decision gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

“When a reporter asked Trump about the high court’s decision several hours after its release, he appeared to have absolutely no idea what had happened,” reported MS NOW’s Steve Benen on Thursday, chronicling Trump asking when the ruling came out and saying he had missed it while talking to contractors about his proposed White House ballroom. Benen then listed other similar exchanges with the president, including his being unaware about US foreign policy in the Democratic Republic of Congo, about his recent meeting with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and about his pardon of crypto exchange Binance founder Changpeng Zhao.

On other occasions he also seemed oblivious to relevant US interests regarding Israel, the suspension of habeas corpus, last year’s government shutdown and a failed top-secret mission in North Korea he reportedly authorized in 2019.

“At a White House event in July, a reporter noted the Trump administration had paused a shipment of military aid intended for Ukraine a week earlier,” Benen mentioned as another example. “Asked who approved this, the president replied, ‘I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?’” He also expressed bewilderment about what reporters were even talking about on occasions when he was asked about the new student visa policy, his nomination of a surgeon general and reports that the administration was expanding mass deportations to Libya.

“The same week, Trump appeared on ‘Meet the Press,’ and when NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked whether everyone in the United States is entitled to due process, the president replied, ‘I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,’” Benen recalled. “When Welker reminded her guest about the Fifth Amendment, Trump again said, ‘I don’t know.’”

He added, “As part of the same exchange, Welker went on to ask, ‘Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?’ Once again, Trump answered, ‘I don’t know.’” Benen then went over Trump’s apparent obliviousness on occasions when he was asked about

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s comments regarding possible tariff exemptions, four U.S. soldiers who had gone missing in Lithuania, the apparent assassination of a Russian general and the Signal group chat scandal.

“Most objective observers would probably agree that if Joe Biden had repeatedly said ‘I don’t know’ in response to simple questions about his own administration, it would have been front-page news — and the Democrat’s responses would have played on a loop for hours on end in conservative media,” Benen observed. “Similarly, Trump has personally invested considerable time and energy in accusing Biden of having been a doddering old ‘autopen’ president who was unaware of events unfolding around him. Given the frequency with which President Bystander clings to “I don’t know” responses, he should probably consider a new line of attack.”

Journalists like Benen are not alone in saying that Trump is displaying signs of cognitive decline. Earlier this month top psychiatrists James Gilligan, Prudence L. Gourguechon, Bandy X. Lee, James R. Merikangas and Jeffrey D. Sachs wrote a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to take measures to rein in the president as he appears to significantly decline.

“President Trump exhibits what forensic mental health experts have, across dozens of independent assessments, identified as the ‘Dark Triad’ of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy,” the psychiatrists wrote in a letter to Congress. “Rather than constituting a clinical diagnosis, this trait-based assessment is grounded in behavioral observation and is particularly useful for assessing the level of danger an individual poses in a political leadership position. We do not offer this as a clinical verdict. We offer it as the considered judgment of a substantial body of professional opinion, based on well-researched evidence that is consistent, accumulating, and impossible to dismiss.”

The professionals then urged Congress to retake its authority over waging war, convene top officials about the crisis and “formally initiate consultation with the Vice President and Cabinet regarding the President’s fitness for office under Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.” Speaking with this journalist for Salon in 2020, Lee predicted that Trump would attempt a coup if he lost that year’s election based on his psychological makeup.

“Those with pathological narcissism are abusive and dangerous because of their catastrophic neediness,” Lee told Salon at the time. “Think of a drowning person gasping for air: a survival instinct just may push you down in order to save one’s own life. In the manner that the body needs oxygen, the soul needs love, and self-love is what a toxic narcissist is desperately lacking. This is why he must overcompensate, creating for himself a self-image where he is the best at everything, never wrong, better than all the experts, and a ‘stable genius.'”

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