Needing a Strait Jacket

Yesterday, at a cabinet meeting, Trump said --

"The Strait is going to be open to everybody. It's international waters.  Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we'll have to blow them up. They understand that."

Putting aside Trump once again threatening to blow up yet another country (which admittedly is a huge amount to put aside), Oman is not someone we're at war with.  Or planning to go to war with.  Or is even an adversary.  Oman is an ally of the United States.

This threat from Trump brought to mind a comment I read last week by psychologist Dr. John Gartner, formerly of Johns Hopkins.  I've quoted him often, and he's been one of the first and leading voices explaining why we can know Trump has dementia and how it manifests itself.

On The Daily Beast Podcast last Wednesday, Dr. Gartner told host Hugh Dougherty that he thought Trump was becoming emboldened by the impact in his party of his candidate endorsements and, as a result, might do the unthinkable, and there may not be anyone in his circle willing to stop him.  He said:

"I really believe that we are going to wake up one morning and he will have launched a first nuclear strike. I believe that this is going to happen because he wants to do it."

Gartner has long described how Trump shows the signs of frontotemporal dementia, which affects a person's decision-making abilities. 

"He no longer has the frontal lobe to give him the restraint, inhibition, and judgment that would cause him to inhibit himself.  And he now has a yes-man cabinet of true believers and psychopaths who are not going to be a backstop. We don't have General Mattis, we don't have John Kelly, we don't have Rex Tillerson. There are no more adults in the room."

This came after the race in Kentucky when Thomas Massie -- a deeply conservative representative who's voted with Trump about 95% of the time, but has been an outspoken advocate for the Epstein files -- was defeated in his primary race.  Dr. Gartner stated:

"And in fact, we just had a primary last night. Massie has been thrown out. There were literally no men or women in elected political office as a Republican who isn't blindly lockstep following him. So I think people need to really get their minds around this. This is going to happen."

To clarify, Dr. Gartner was not talking just of bombing a country, but making a nuclear strike.  On the positive side, there are more hurdles for making a nuclear attack.  On the negative side, as he said, there are fewer guardrails around Trump this term.  And when talking about Oman, Trump didn't just reference dropping bombs on them - an ally - but "blow them up."

Obviously, I have no idea what Trump will do.  Nor, I'm sure he'll agree, does Dr. Gartner.  (Nor, I would suspect, does Trump…)  But what Dr. Gartner does have is an extremely good, highly professional, expert's idea about how someone with dementia acts in general terms.  And so, his larger point is that Trump's dementia has affected his decision-making process and there is no one around him to say no to whatever those bad decisions are.

He said he felt this could lead to Trump wanting to drop nukes.  And just days later, there was Trump threatening to blow up an ally.

That is deeply unlikely to happen.

But, again, the larger point remains.  Dr. Gartner believes that Trump shows clear signs of frontotemporal dementia, and whether it's actions considered the most dangerous or one that's "as" unthinkable, but dangerous, they all fit in with the symptoms of someone showing the signs of that condition, which affects a person's decision-making abilities. And is degenerative.

And the MAGOPs in Congress still go along with him, enable him and support his decisions all the way.  Because even if you support Trump 95% of the time, that's not good enough for a malignant narcissist.  And so you must be defeated.

Or blown up.

On his best day, Trump can always go lower.  But with no front temporal lobe to rein in his decisions, there is no bottom.

​The good news is that his approval is 34%.  And that can go lower, too.