Is Trump deranged? Do Trumpsters care?

AROUND THE BLOCK

I learned today…

I learned today, courtesy of Vanity Fair, that Donald J. Trump maybe truly deranged.

As Eric Lutz of VF writes, “For someone as prolific in his Twitter usage as Donald Trump, it takes a particularly deranged day online to register on the political Richter scale. The president had just such a day and then some on Sunday, firing off a wild, 32-tweet rant over the course of several hours on a range of topics. The tirade, much of which was in direct response to whomever was speaking on TV, was peppered with self-pitying laments about perceived slights against him and provided a real-time glimpse into the president’s fraying psyche.”

Lutz continued, “It’s unclear what, exactly, prompted the tweet storm—his favorite Fox News programs coming under fire? Anxiety about the anticipated release of Robert Mueller’s report? Some bad corned beef? But Trump cast a wide net on Sunday, beginning his morning by grousing about a Saturday Night Live rerun he found 'not funny' because it always makes fun of 'the same person (me).' He followed this up with several attacks on the late John McCain; railed against Shep Smith and other Fox hosts he doesn’t like; called on the network to defend Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro, two hosts he does like; engaged in some anti-immigrant fear-mongering, mere days after a far-right terrorist who espoused similar rhetoric murdered dozens of Muslims in New Zealand; and, of course, raged against the Mueller probe.

As Lutz reported, there was considerable searching for the why’s of Trump’s Sunday diatribe:

Matthew Miller (former Department of Justice spokesman and MSNBC analyst): “There has to be something coming, right? Trump is incredibly unhinged today even for him, and with no apparent prompting,” going on to say, that then again the president could simply be “crazy and doesn’t need any particular prompting to show it.”

Even conservatives piled on, with Bill Kristol tweeting, “Averting your eyes is refusing to come to grips with Trump’s mental condition and psychological state. It’s avoiding reality,” and George Conway, husband of Kellyanne, simply noting (and pinning to his profile), “His condition is getting worse.”

According to VF, even Trump officials seemed worn out by his relentless bellyaching. “When The Daily Beast asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders if the president’s tweets ‘speak for themselves,’ her default line when he goes off the rails, she simply replied: ‘Yes.’ One former Trump official told the publication that he’d had to turn off notifications from Trump’s Twitter handle, saying that it had become ‘too much.’ 

But, as VF suggests,  “it doesn’t seem like they’ll get a respite anytime soon. Trump was off to the races early on Monday with an avalanche of tweets about General Motors, his approval rating, and Joe Biden—'another low I.Q. individual.’”

C’mon Trumpsters. (I know there are a few of you out there reading Around the Block). Own up to it. You’re supporting an unbalanced, disturbed, unhinged, crazy man. Please note – I stopped the synonyms at “irrational” because, I believe, he knows exactly what he needs to do to garner your support. And that’s not “irrational.” The fact that you buy into it, however, might be.