Over the weekend, I was having a conversation with a friend about Trump’s dystopian speech in Dayton. Which led to discussing some of Trump's other recent dystopian speeches, his mental gaffes and court problems, which seem to be putting great pressure on him and are exacerbating his other issues. My friend said that high among his hopes was that Trump will have a meltdown that will be devastating to his campaign.
I replied that I didn’t think "hope" played any part in this subject. Although my personal belief on the matter means absolutely nothing as proof or definitive evidence, I firmly believe that Trump will have a meltdown – and it will be devastating to his campaign. How problematic remains to be seen, but the important point is that in a close election such as this, a meltdown doesn’t have to eviscerate his entire campaign. Even getting just 3% of undecided Independents and moderate Republican voters wavering on the edge, looking for a reason to cut anchor and justify their actions, will turn a razor-thin 51-49 election into a 54-46 landslide. Will that happen? I don’t have a crystal ball, I don’t know. But I do firmly believe that Trump will have a very public meltdown, and something that visceral will have to strip away at least some votes. How many is the question. But even just 3% could be devastating. My certainty comes from the observation (even without having a medical degree…) that Trump appears to be in the early stages of dementia. I don’t say this based on my personal non-medical observation (no matter how blatant it seems in a non-medical way), but rather from my observation reading many articles by highly-credentialed psychiatrists and experts in the field. Experts who wrote back during Trump’s time in office that he manifested all the qualities of a “malignant narcissist” – a medical term for someone who isn’t just focused on himself, but must destroy everything else around him. In fact, several dozen psychiatrists got together to write a book that explained in detail their sense of Trump And that was then. He has only gotten worse. And what so many psychiatrists who deal with dementia write is that Trump is clearly manifesting many classic qualities of early dementia – and they give detailed examples. Among them, these include the challenge such patients have of saying words properly and instead make up similar-sounding words to get them through (such as his “Venezeruegula” the other day, and many others), as well as the inability to finish sentences and quickly changing to something else. But their observations weren’t limited to just these sorts of examples, but more. And to be clear, they aren’t talking about a person getting older and being forgetful. That’s normal. We see it in President Biden, we see it all around us, it's natural. I remember when my dad gave up his medical practice, a friend asked him what he did now that he was retired. My dad laughed, “I look for things.” But this with Trump, the psychiatrists say, is something else entirely. It’s not the natural condition of getting old, it's a medical condition. And the important thing about dementia is that Trump isn’t going to get better. And already it’s pretty dystopian, gaffe-filled and problematic. And there are eight months to go before the election. Now, add in the pressure of four trials. And owing over $500 million. And facing jail. And a presidential campaign that he needs to win to shut down the investigations. And while Trump wasn’t criticized in the Republican primary (until the very end when the race was all over, yet even at that he still reacted poorly), he will now be attacked every single day by the Biden campaign and all Democrats, unrelentingly…for eight months. And Trump, as we’ve seen for the past eight years, can’t handle being criticized. As far back as the 2016 campaign when Hilary Clinton said during a debate that Trump was a Russian puppet of Putin, Trump couldn’t help himself and interrupted her, whining out, “No puppet, no puppet, you’re the puppet,” like an eight-year-old child. So – yes, I firmly believe that Trump will have a meltdown. Now, add on top of that $500 million in total, various fines, came the news yesterday that Trump is not only unable to personally pay his $464 million court-mandated fine for committing fraud, but he has been unable to get an insurance bond from 30 companies he went to. This is a total embarrassment for him. For someone whose self-worth is wrapped up entirely by his claims of great wealth, this must be devastating. After all, this is someone who for years tried to manipulate Forbes to get on their Richest People in the World list. Someone who attracted his earliest political support by bragging that he was so rich he could self-fund his entire-billion dollar campaign and beholden to no one. Someone who ranted at the judge that his Mar-a-Lago home should actually be valued at $1.8 billion, not the paltry $18-27.6 million the Palm Beach County Assessor appraised the property at. Someone who recently swore under oath in court that had $400 million in cash at the ready. And now, not only can he not come up with the money himself, but 30 insurance bond companies all turned him down as a bad risk. That must be crushing to him. Adding even far more self-inflicted pressure on himself than the mass of pressure that already exists. As he knows that New York Attorney General Letitia James (not only black, but a woman – a nightmare reality to racist and misogynistic Trump no doubt) has been preparing for a seizure of assets. Perhaps even Trump Tower, she's hinted. The pressure of all this must be desolating to him. So – yes, I firmly believe that Trump will have a meltdown. The issue, to me, with my non-medical degree or expertise, is not hoping that Trump will have a public meltdown that will be devastating to his campaign, but trying to figure out when it will be. For the longest time, I thought it would occur during his debate with President Biden. When asked by the debate panel, “Who won the 2020 election?,” I’ve felt confident that Trump would spin out of control trying to prove to the live TV audience that the election was rigged and stolen from him -- while standing next to the actual President of the United States. And when asked, “How do you convince people to vote for someone who was twice found liable by juries for what the judge wrote was the equivalence of rape?”, Trump would again go into a whirling dervish rage insisting that he “didn’t know that women! I never met that woman! She’s lying! It’s a witch hunt!” – the very things that got him twice found liable of defamation. It would be a double-meltdown on live TV. The question, though, is if Trump will agree to debate. He says he wants to, but we know how little that’s worth. However, even if there are debates, I’ve now reached a new conclusion for a meltdown date that will occur months before. And that would be his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, an event which all TV will cover live. Though I didn’t read Susan Glasser’s article in the New Yorker last week, I did see interviews with her discussing it. She said she spent a day attending an entire Trump rally, and it was deeply depressing. Far more dystopian beyond even his bleak 2016 Inauguration speech. In fact, it was so bleak and dark and dystopian that she argued it isn’t enough for TV to just show snippets of Trump’s mental glitches, as they’ve started to do, but when you watch an entire Trump speech in full context these days – something only the most devout Trump acolytes see – it goes to almost unimaginable depths that the public doesn’t expect. No doubt Trump will have speech writers putting together a toned-down manifesto for the Republican Convention. But at this point, most of those reasonable staffers of the past are long gone, and he’s surrounded by the true believers and yes men, unlikely to go against his wishes. And the bleakness, the echoes of Hitler, the references to vermin, animals, bloodbaths, not being human are likely what Trump wants to say – because it’s what he believes. And because it’s what works for him in front of his adoring crowds. But this time, the country will be tuned in. Watching as he has trouble reading the TelePrompter and has to say “Venezeruegula.” And further, we know Trump goes off the text when the spirt moves him. And the spirit is now moving him regularly. Along with this being four months from now, when the trials have gotten closer, his property may have been seized, his financial net worth has plummeted, his personal self-worth has withered, the pressure has gotten more intense, and from the crashing weight of it all the dementia has gotten even worse. I can’t swear that any of this will happen. Furthermore, I can't even say that if it does happen that that means President Biden will win re-election. The world is pretty weird these days, and most weird of all are Republicans, the one-time Party of Lincoln, supporting a man found liable for rape, guilty of fraud, echoing Hitler, saying he wants to trash the Constitution, be a dictator on Day One and tells Russia it can do "whatever the hell it wants" to our NATO democratic allies. But still, for all these reasons, at the very least, I firmly believe that Trump will have a meltdown – and it will be devastating to his campaign. As another friend says about all such things, “I don’t know. We’ll see.” Yes. I don’t know either. We’ll see. Including how devastating it will be to his campaign. End all chances, or recoverable? I don't know. We'll see. But these are the reasons why I think it will happen -- and be devastating, in at least some ways. Because at the foundation of everything, whatever mental issue Trump is struggling with…it’s not getting better. Worse by the day. And the election is still eight long, deteriorating months away.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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