Michael Gerson: Trump Is Delusional

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1. Christine Langhoff says:

   August 24, 2017 at 11:48 pm

   Hurrican Harvey is on its way to Texas, with flooding predicted as high as 24-48 inches. Natural disasters are a test of readiness in a normal administration. There isn’t even a FEMA director in place. I fear how many lives may be lost.

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   • Joel Herman (@jwherman11) says:

     August 25, 2017 at 4:45 am

     Trump will blame a poor response on the states. Nothing touches the Teflon Don with his ignorant base.

     “Who knew healthcare could be so difficult.”

     The last time we had an idiot in the White House .

     “W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn’t dry. Bye, bye, American lives. “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees,””

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2. Yvonne Siu-Runyan says:

   August 24, 2017 at 11:51 pm

   t-Rump is a psychopath. He is unfit and a bully. Plus he is illiterate and a pathological liar. May he rot.

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3. Christine Langhoff says:

   August 24, 2017 at 11:53 pm

   Here’s Garrison Keillor to cheer us up, and to remind us of summer tomatoes. Bless the man!

   https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-will-survive-this/2017/08/01/7be9322c-76f0-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html?utm_term=.a97041e9ae4e

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4. dienne77 says:

   August 25, 2017 at 7:54 am

   You’re looking to Bush’s speechwriter to tell us about Trump’s mental state? How delusional does one have to be to write speeches for Bush “Mission Accomplished and I know those WMD are in here somewhere” Bush?? Gerson has done enough damage in his lifetime. It’s time for him to go slink off under some rock somewhere.

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   • dianeravitch says:

     August 25, 2017 at 7:58 am

     Disagree, Dienne. Gersen has insider knowledge of the Presidency and the Republican Party. I find his insights and those of David Frum valuable. Don’t read him if you don’t like him. I will.

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5. Linda says:

   August 25, 2017 at 9:07 am

   Delusion must be endemic in D.C. Bill and Melinda Gates are touted as altruistic by both parties, while he is an investor in the largest for-profit seller of schools-in-a-box and, while they fund an organization with marching orders “to develop diverse charter school organizations to produce different brands on a large scale”.

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6. Bob Shepherd says:

   August 25, 2017 at 10:57 am

   I have really, really tried to give Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt. But I am horrified by some of what’s happening–kids being separated from their parents, for example, by overzealous immigration enforcement. And I was sickened by his endorsement of the RAISE Act, which would restrict immigration to folks with degrees and money.

   Economists call the idea that immigration takes jobs from poor workers the “lump of labor” fallacy. The fact is–and all the economic studies show this–that immigration CREATES jobs because a) immigrants get haircuts and buy groceries, like everyone else; and b) immigrants–especially ones without college educations–start businesses that employ citizen workers at MANY TIMES the rate that current citizens do.

   The notion that immigration steals jobs is completely false, but it plays well in the identity politics of the Alt-Right.

   And the RAISE Act is profoundly un-American. I remember a great Studs Terkel interview with a stevedore in New York. The stevedore said, “We dock workers are the scum of the Earth. America was built by the scum of the Earth.” Yes. And a very wonderful thing, that has been and still is–the essence of who we are as a country. When we lose being a nation of people who come here for a fresh start and then struggle to succeed, we lose our soul.

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   • Bob Shepherd says:

     August 25, 2017 at 11:01 am

     NB: The reference to the “lump of labor” fallacy comes from an article on the RAISE Act in Forbes.

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7. bethree5 says:

   August 25, 2017 at 11:22 am

   For some reason I can’t read the Gerson piece without a subscription. (They still let me read Valerie Strauss for free)

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   • dianeravitch says:

     August 25, 2017 at 12:27 pm

     Bethree (shhh…don’t tell Jeff Bezos):

     “And so, on one day, we had an unhinged and divisive rant by President Trump in Phoenix. Then, the next day in Reno, Nev., a call for national unity and reconciliation. Multiple political personality disorder. Rhetorical schizophrenia.
The gap between Trump extemporaneous and Trump scripted is canyon-like. The normal role of a speechwriter is to find, refine and elevate the voice of a leader. The greatest professional victory comes when a president thinks: This is the way I would sound if I had more time to write and more talent with language. In these circumstances, speechwriting is not deception; it is amplification.
But what about speechwriting that is designed to give a leader a different voice? Here moral issues begin to lurk. Is it ethical to make a cynical leader appear principled? A violent leader seem pacific? A cruel leader seem compassionate? This calculation is difficult, because most of us have an incongruous mix of such traits. Or maybe a speechwriter can hope a president will eventually rise to the level of his teleprompter.
My purpose is not to indict the president’s speechwriters. It is to point out that, in Trump’s case, there is no doubt which is his authentic voice, because he leaves no room for doubt. In rambling stemwinders such as the one in Phoenix, he plays rhetorical games with the artificial (for him) constraints of being presidential. “Nobody wants me to talk about your other senator — who’s weak on borders, weak on crime,” he said of (conservative Republican) Jeff Flake. “Now everybody’s happy.” Here the “nobody” clearly included his own concerned advisers. Trump often uses speeches (and Twitter) to cut the strings of their counsel.
Trump deserves a patent on the idea that political authenticity means spontaneity. So it was the real voice that we heard in Phoenix, attacking a man with brain cancer — Republican Sen. John McCain — without any wish for his recovery. The real voice defending a supporter who had been fired by CNN for writing “Sieg Heil” on Twitter. The real voice making fun of a TV anchor’s height. The real voice again widening racial divisions by defending Confederate monuments as “our history and our heritage.” (Instead of the royal “we,” the white “we.”) It was the real voice expressing greater passion in criticizing journalists than white supremacists.



     “Trump dares us to take him at face value. His self-revelation comes unbidden, even involuntarily. And his transparency reveals a disordered personality.

Why does this matter? For one thing, his Phoenix remarks indicate a loose connection to reality. His response to the violence in Charlottesville was, in his view, “perfect.” The North Koreans, he claimed, are learning to “respect” America (for which there is no evidence). “I don’t believe that any president has accomplished as much as this president in the first six or seven months,” Trump claimed of himself. “I really do not believe it.”
What if Trump really believes what he claims? Then he would be not deceptive, but deluded. A deluded man in charge of North Korean policy. A deluded man who could employ nuclear weapons at a moment’s notice (actually two to three minutes to order a launch). This appears to be the reason that national security professionals such as former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and former acting CIA director John McLaughlin have been particularly disturbed of late. Trump is not merely acting unpresidential; he is erratic and grandiose.
This also matters in a domestic context. On the evidence of the Phoenix speech, Trump believes that a government shutdown is preferable to giving up on funding for the southern border wall. This involves a different type of delusion. Poll after poll demonstrates that about 35 percent of Americans support Trump’s wall. You can’t hold national parks and veterans’ payments hostage over an issue like this and expect to win.
Adds one Republican budget expert I spoke with: “It also takes careful management of the levers available to the administration in a shutdown to keep it from becoming a nightmare immediately, and OMB [Office of Management and Budget] is not doing the work to prepare. Incompetence is the death of these guys over and over.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) know a shutdown would not turn out well. But Trump’s version of reality appears to make another Republican legislative and political disaster inevitable. The unified control of House, Senate and presidency means little when the president lives in a reality of his own.”

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     • bethree5 says:

       August 30, 2017 at 4:30 pm

       Thanks for re-printing that, Diane! A stinging and on-the-nose commentary. My favorite line (re: which voice is it, Trump’s or the speechwriter’s): “in Trump’s case, there is no doubt which is his authentic voice, because he leaves no room for doubt.”

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   • Laura H. Chapman says:

     August 25, 2017 at 12:33 pm

     I am also excluded. but here is the full text of Trump’s 77 minute rant in Arizona. http://time.com/4912055/donald-trump-phoenix-arizona-transcript/

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     • bethree5 says:

       August 30, 2017 at 4:39 pm

       Thanks, Laura… I guess. (Ugh!) I had only caught excerpts before. It is so gross, the way he picks up on the ‘event’-excitement of the crowd, & just plays it & plays it & plays it.

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8. Linda says:

   August 25, 2017 at 11:46 am

   Falwell Jr. was the only Trump supporter willing to go on the Sunday morning political programs last week. Politico published (Aug. 25, 2017) “…Falwell’s South Beach Flop House”- a somewhat interesting article.

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   • dianeravitch says:

     August 25, 2017 at 12:00 pm

     Falwell said that Trump always says what’s on his mind and that upsets some people. Like the Access Hollywood tape, when he said he liked to grab women by their p——. Falwell kind of guy.

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