New Orleans There’s no question that these are unsettling and scary times. The United States is notching another milestone on its way to being a failed and rouge state, entered its first governmental shutdown in seven years. The last was over Trump’s attempts fund a wall along the US border with Mexico. This time the issue is funding subsidies for the Affordable Care Act to prevent millions of lower income families from losing their Medicaid coverage.
Combine this news with the many reports of what one reporter called the “political theater” of President Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth pulling 800 of the top US military leaders into the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, at enormous expense for what appears to be little or nothing other than a failed attempt at trying to move the nation’s military from an apolitical, nonpartisan policy to being a MAGA force employed domestically in blue US cities. In an early shot at what we can all hope was meant as a joke, Trump told the top brass that, “… if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank. There goes your future.” For his part, Hegseth wants all of them and their charges to shape up, lose weight, and cut their beards. He doesn’t want any fat generals in the Pentagon. This is almost too bizarre to read and believe.
But it’s more worrisome than that.
In an analysis of Trump’s speech, a reporter who had covered a number of Trump’s recent speech wrote this about them,
They sat mostly in silence as Mr. Trump talked for 73 minutes about the same things he talks about almost every day, no matter where he is or to whom he is speaking. He talked to the generals about Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the infamous autopen. He talked about the media. He talked about tariffs and the border. He talked about the time he went to a restaurant in Washington to eat dinner. He talked about not being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize he felt he had earned. Mr. Trump repeated a litany of complaints during his 73-minute speech. These were pretty much the same things he talked about a day earlier while standing next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the State Dining Room at the White House, which were the same things he talked about at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona, which were the same things he talked about at Windsor Castle and at Chequers in England.
He goes on later to observe,
…it wasn’t exactly clear from Mr. Trump’s speech what that might have been. He would occasionally slip in observations or references that were more on topic, but these flights from his usual refrains seemed almost beside the point, if indeed there was one. “I think we should maybe start thinking about battleships,” he said at one point. “By the way, the B-2 bombers were incredible,” he said at another point. He mentioned that he used to love watching “Victory at Sea,” the old black-and-white television series about World War II.
For a 79-year-old, he’s often shown a great deal of energy, but he seemed a bit sapped …. As his remarks went on and on, his voice took on a more monotonous quality. A day earlier, when he spoke at the White House while standing beside Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Trump sounded out of breath at times.
I’d like to say I was reading between the lines, but, truthfully, it’s more like hearing something being shouted at you. Being repetitive and telling the same stories regardless of the context and the audience is not a sign of good health and well-being. Other reports on heart congestion and unexplained bruises on his hand are also dire. Yes, Trump is sui generis in my view, and in public life he’s always been a grievance-filled rambler, but it’s impossible to ignore what we’re hearing and seeing now: Trump is losing it!
That’s all we need these days. A president on repeat and rewind, crumbling and losing it in front of all of us and the world, and a defense secretary who never had it prattling on about nothing.
Houston, we have a problem.