Down the Rabbit Hole to Wonderland

Yesterday, as Trump prepared to have one of his sit-down "press gaggles" with the visiting Philippine president, I turned off the TV since I had no interest in watching another of those debacles.  And it turned out to have been a debacle -- just a different kind of one that I expected.

For a long while, a friend and I have wondered when Trump would have a meltdown moment on camera -- and while this wasn't that, it was a cousin.  If a casting director was watching, while in the process of working on a remake of The Caine Mutiny, the film may have found their 'Captain Queeg.' 

From accounts I came across later, it seem pretty appalling, even by Trump standards.  As reporters asked a range of question, Trump kept returning to his attacks on President Obama, having nothing to do with what he'd been asked.  At one point, for instance, Trump was asked about the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, but he quickly went far off-track and began ranting about the Horowitz Report, an investigation made by the Inspector General back in  2018, about FBI and DOJ actions during the 2016 election.

"That report has gotten lost and it shouldn't be lost," Trump said. "You should all go back, and it should be mandatory reading. Go back and read the Horowitz report on Comey and his cronies, and you'll see exactly. We're going to add that to all the stuff that we found."

And of course, when reporters raised a question about Jeffrey Epstein, that was Trump's hot-button topic which not only necessitated an immediate change of subject, but removed all guardrails as he began to spew about what he described as Obama's "criminality."

“After what they did to me — and whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama’s been caught directly,” Trump told reporters, sliding over his comment about "whether it's right or wrong," since most people tend to avoid doing what they know is wrong. “What they did in 2016 and 2020 is very criminal. It’s criminal at the highest level. So that’s really the things you should be talking about.”

“Look, he’s guilty. It’s not a question,” Trump added. “This was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election.”

Putting aside that it's head-shaking stunning, beyond egregious for a public official, let along the U.S. president, who isn't experiencing a cognitive tantrum to declare someone guilty before they've even been indicted (which is not going to happen), especially declaring them guilty of treason -- which is a ton to put aside -- Trump soon after entered the Twilight Zone.

"We found absolute — this isn't like evidence or — this is like proof, irrefutable proof," Trump continued, "that Obama was seditious, that Obama was trying to lead a coup and it was with Hillary Clinton, with all these other people. But Obama headed it up. And, you know, I get a kick when I hear everyone talks about people I've never even heard of, it was this way — no, no, it was Obama. He headed it up and it says so right in the papers."

I mean…yipes!  As I said, this isn’t exactly the ultimate Meltdown Moment on TV, but you can see it from here.

This was about as close to quintessential Trump projection as you can find.  You may never get Trump admitting to staging a coup, but that's nonetheless what he's describing here.

And it's his dementia in full-blown obsession.

There are only three things are missing in this dementia-laden rant.

1) His "evidence."

2) An indictment.

3) That he didn't claim, while anxiously twirling little metal balls in his hand, that by using geometric logic he found the strawberries.

By the way, lest we slide past this quip as just being a quip -- one of the most egregious things about Trump's Monday Meltdown is how coverage of it normalized something that was so contrary to judicial norms but since it's Trump being Trump, people just shrug and roll their eyes.  But it is against all ethics for a public officials, and most-especially a president to declare anyone guilty of a crime before they've not only been convicted of anything...but before they've even been indicted.  Now, of course, Trump's words are just lunatic, and President Obama is not going to be indicted for anything, nor even have a real investigation opened -- but that doesn't mean Trump's reprehensible actions should ever be normalized because he's Trump and that's what he always does.

That aside (which, with Trump, is what rational society always has to do to make its way through the muck), how out of control was Trump spiraling away from rationality in front of the cameras?  President Obama felt compelled to release to statement through a spokesperson, Patrick Rodenbush.  He said --

“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”

And yes, this from Trump was, of course, just a desperate, obvious, hoped-for distraction.  Something that his base could leap on for another conspiracy to feed their unquenchable obsession.  The problem for him (aside from the fact that his base has shown it can handle far more than one conspiracy theory at a time...) is that it's one thing to distract -- "Hey, look over there at the big, shiny object!" -- and it's another to do so by having what almost seems like a psychotic episode.  Because that doesn't speak to the distraction, but the mental condition and dementia Trump is experiencing.  All the worse for Trump because dementia is degenerative.  

As expert psychologist Dr. Jack Gartner, from Johns Hopkins, says he tells people:  "Look at Trump now, because it's the best you will ever see him."