The Felon's Latest Meltdown and Deteriorating Mental State

The Felon has long been a malignant narcissist with delusions of grandeur and a belief he can do no wrong regardless of how insane and untethered from reality he and his actions appear to others who are in touch with objective reality.  For far too long many, including lazy "journalists" and spineless congressional Republicans have shrugged their shoulders and basically said the insane behavior is merely the Felon being the Felon.  Yet anyone serious about the welfare of America should know that the Felon's latest behavior is blaring out a warning that he is increasingly unfit for office and has made America's position in the world far less secure.  Indeed, there is more talk of the use of the 25th Amendment as a mechanism to remove the Felon from office as he becomes increasing unhinged and insulting everyone from the Pope to once longtime allies. What we are witnessing is NOT normal behavior and looking the other way or muttering in private disapproval will only make the situation more dangerous as the Felon has meltdown after meltdown.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the unhinged commander-in-chief.  When will more Republicans open their eyes to what is going on? Here are highlights: 

On many recent nights, [the Felon] Donald Trump has been posting obsessively on his Truth Social site into the wee hours. The president, of course, has never been one for a solid night’s sleep—or restrained and temperate commentary on social media—but his emotional state seems to be fraying: This weekend, he attacked Pope Leo XIV, presented himself as Jesus Christ, and then jabbed at his phone until dawn.

Judging from those posts, the commander in chief is in distress. No one can say for sure what is causing the president’s bizarre behavior. Perhaps Trump’s narcissistic insistence that he is always successful in everything he undertakes is feeling the sting and strain of multiple public failures, including the collapse of his campaign to dislodge the Iranian regime, plummeting approval ratings, the decline of the U.S. economy, and, on Sunday, the crushing defeat of one of his favorite fellow authoritarians, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

But whatever is driving this decline in [the Felon's] Trump’s self-control, Americans must not shrug off the president’s latest implosion. They should recover their ability to be outraged; more to the point, they must demand that their elected representatives ask questions about the course of the war and whether [the Felon] Trump still has the capacity to fulfill his constitutional duty as commander in chief. Too much is at risk to dismiss his outbursts as just another idiosyncrasy: U.S. forces have been at war for almost six weeks, and China is reportedly helping Iran rearm. Even if all other problems, including the economy, were holding steady—and they are not—America cannot keep ignoring the dysfunction of the commander in chief, the sole steward of the codes to a massive nuclear arsenal.

Trump has always gotten lost in his own public statements, splashing about like a poor swimmer trying to reach the shore of a fast-moving river. But the [Felon] president is now flailing in blacker and deeper waters. Genocidal threats against the the Iranians, with whom America is at war, are bad enough, but his defenders will excuse them as part of the Trumpian bulldozer approach to international negotiation; aiming long screeds at the pope, as if he, too, is an enemy of the United States, is not only unhinged but entirely pointless. Trump’s fusillade against the first American pope was not only politically incomprehensible—20 percent of Americans are Catholics, and most of them voted for Trump—but it was yet more evidence that the president is sinking into rage and confusion.

Why was Trump angry with Pope Leo? For the same reason that Trump ever gets mad at anyone: The Holy Father dared to criticize him.  Last week, the president of the United States posted an expletive-filled threat—on Easter Sunday, no less—to destroy the ancient civilization of Iran. His supporters wrote this off as a clever gambit to bring an end to the war (which it has not). Leo called the threat “unacceptable,” blasted the “delusion of omnipotence” that led to the war, and said: “Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war!”

Of course, Trump wasn’t going to take that kind of talk from some former Chicago science teacher just because the guy is now the Bishop of Rome. So a few minutes after nine on Sunday night, Trump posted a salvo of more than 300 words on Truth Social. . . . The [Felon] president accused the pope of being “Weak on Crime” and “Weak on Nuclear Weapons.” He said that Leo “wasn’t on any list to be Pope” and that he likes Leo’s brother Louis much better because “Louis is all MAGA.” . . . . And so it went, sentence after sentence of boorishness and whiny self-regard.

But [the Felon] Trump wasn’t finished. He had recommendations for the pontiff about how to be a better Vicar of Christ, saying he “should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.” Again, Trump is not a Catholic—he has referred to Communion as a “little wine” with some “little crackers”—and his track record both as a president and a person is replete with the seven deadly sins (and probably a few more that haven’t made the list yet). He is also now officially the most unpopular modern president ever, so the pope might understandably pass on accepting either his secular or spiritual advice.

This one screed against the leader of a billion and a half Catholics was worrisome enough, but for [the Felon] Trump, it was just the beginning of a long night. Only 45 minutes after flaming the pope, Trump—now back at the White House—posted an AI-generated image of himself as (apparently) Jesus Christ, healing a sick man while soldiers and nurses and other worshipful white people gaze in awe and military jets fly overhead. You have to see the image to really grasp its weirdness, and to take in how offensive, even heretical, it might be to Christians of any mainstream denomination.

This is not the behavior of a stable, healthy leader. Pope Leo, for his part, said he has “no fear” of the administration and will continue to preach the messages of the Gospel. The rest of us, however, should be very worried about a commander in chief who is trying to govern the country between social-media binges, who attacks religious leaders in narcissistic frenzy, and who imagines himself as a deity. If an elderly parent did such things, most people would be concerned. The president doing such things is far more alarming.

The American people must not look away, as they have done so often in the past. They must pay attention to the president’s deterioration, and insist that the House and Senate start acting like functioning branches of the government by asking the White House to explain what is happening, without insults or evasions, before the eyes of the country and the world.