{"id":591179,"date":"2026-04-18T05:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T05:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/591179\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T05:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T05:56:08","slug":"i-was-already-worried-about-trumps-mental-decline-it-just-got-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/591179\/","title":{"rendered":"I was already worried about Trump\u2019s mental decline\u2014it just got worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week in this space I suggested that maybe Donald Trump was not quite all there<\/a>. I would like to revise that opinion. I think he may be what we used to call stark raving bonkers.<\/p>\n

I apologise for my use of rather blunt language. A reader cautioned me that the use of such terms was stigmatising of people with mental health issues. Of course, Donald Trump himself would regard this as woke DEI nonsense. Only this week he used the phrase NUT JOBS<\/a> to describe four former cheerleaders who dared criticise his chaotic and murderous adventure in Iran. Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens and Alex Jones were not only NUT JOBS but they were also LOSERS with low IQs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In this spirit, I think Donald Trump would appreciate others using direct speech. So let\u2019s not pussyfoot around talking about his \u201cerratic\u201d or \u201cunpredictable\u201d behaviour: all the signs are that he is positively unhinged.<\/p>\n

Consider four episodes this week in which the president\u2019s behaviour was straightforwardly loony.<\/p>\n

The first was the Jesus image thing<\/a>. Let\u2019s say this slowly so that the full insanity of what happened can fully sink in. The most powerful political leader in the world posted an AI image of himself dressed up as the son of God, healing the sick.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How narcissistic do you have to be to do such a thing? What kind of delusions of grandeur do you have; what degree of messianic complex or hypomania?<\/p>\n

A useful measure of abnormality would be to consider how an averagely well-run business or organisation would deal with a leader who behaved so aberrantly that it became routine for observers to suggest they had lost their marbles.<\/p>\n

In most places, the HR department would be looking at a twin-track policy of \u201csupport\u201d and \u201cprotection\u201d. The support track could involve medical leave or a \u201ctimeout\u201d. There would be confidential health interventions and adjusted duties. The protection track would restructure decision-making authority, limit contact with staff and include a crisis communication plan. Board members would be discussing a managed exit, NDAs, pay-offs etc.<\/p>\n

But not, of course, in the White House or among the diminishing band of Team Trump. With them, there\u2019s simply a roll of the eyes: Donald will be Donald.<\/p>\n

But the more disturbing aspect of the Jesus image was the circumstances in which it came to be posted by Trump on his Truth Social account in the wee small hours\u2014and that is the second reason to believe the president is round the bend.<\/p>\n

Once everyone else has gone home and is fast asleep, the president\u2014raw, unfiltered\u2014starts his routine of unleashing a stream of consciousness on the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is unplugged, unshackled, unconstrained when it comes to Truth Social,\u201d wrote the journalist Chris Whipple in his profile<\/a> of Trump\u2019s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. \u201cAll they can do is to try and keep up and do damage control\u2014and rarely do they even do that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the night he shared his Jesus picture, his Truth Social timeline showed a terrifying picture of Trump\u2019s deranged behaviour. A democratic political commentator, Harry Sisson,<\/a> logs the president\u2019s outpouring, and on the night of 12th\/13th April he recorded<\/a> the Jesus image at 9.49pm. This was followed a minute later by a picture of Trump Tower on the moon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reminder: this is a president in the middle of a war he started which is causing untold mayhem around the world.<\/p>\n

Between 10pm and 11pm, he posted a dumb meme and two news clips. At 12.43am he announced that the US would be blockading the Straits of Hormuz\u2014that\u2019s right, in the middle of the night. Two hours later, there followed a link to a piece about Joe Biden (posted twice, at 2.35 am and 2.37 am). He had a swipe at a Democratic congressman, Eric Swalwell, (who has now resigned from Congress) at 2.37 am\u2014and a minute later posted an article about his ballroom project. Finally, at 4.10 am, he posted an article about Iran.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s not sleeping, he\u2019s pretending to be Jesus, and he\u2019s posting all night,\u201d concluded Sisson. \u201cHe\u2019s not well.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Who could disagree?<\/p>\n

The third nutty thing the president did this week was to go to war with the pope. Now\u2014contrary to some doctrine\u2014the pope is not infallible. It\u2019s okay to disagree with him. But it is at least politically bonkers to go for him, particularly in the week your own team has told you to delete the Jesus image. And it\u2019s even madder to rant and rave about things the pope is entirely innocent of.<\/p>\n

Why, unless you\u2019ve become unanchored from any reality, would you falsely say that<\/a> the pope \u201cthinks it\u2019s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.\u201d If instead of erupting on Truth Social, Trump googled the pope\u2019s position on nuclear weapons, he\u2019d find in about four seconds that he\u2019s repeatedly called<\/a> for a world free from nuclear threat. He does not, except in Trump\u2019s head, believe that Iran should join the nuclear club.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Does Trump know that he\u2019s speaking nonsense? Does he care? On what grounds does he accuse<\/a> the pope of being \u201cWEAK on Crime\u201d \u2013 or are we now at the stage where he just says the first thing that pops into his head? What do we call acting or speaking without filtering or thinking ahead? A DEI label would be \u201ca tendency to externalise first thoughts\u201d. But maybe we could just\u00a0say<\/a> the guy is one taco short of a combo plate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finally, we witnessed the bizarre spectacle of Trump dragging his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, to\u00a0watch<\/a> an Ultimate Fighting Championship pay-per-view fight night at the very same time that his vice president, JD Vance, was supposedly trying to negotiate<\/a> an end to the Iran war along with Trump\u2019s golfing buddy, Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner. I mean, who in their right mind would do such a thing in the middle of a global crisis they have themselves sparked?\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is now so glaringly obvious that Trump is in some way round the bend that even the New York Times has deigned\u00a0<\/a>to notice it\u2014albeit in the measured language favoured by the Grey Lady: \u201cTrump\u2019s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate\u201d was the muted headline on a piece that caused some ripples this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The notable development is that it is the Maga diehards who now acknowledge the true state of affairs. Former representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who recently broke with Mr Trump, advocated using the 25th Amendment, telling CNN that threatening to destroy Iran\u2019s civilization was \u201cnot tough rhetoric, it\u2019s insanity.\u201d<\/a> Candace Owens, the far-right podcaster, called him \u201ca genocidal lunatic.\u201d<\/a> Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, said Mr Trump \u201cdoes babble and sounds like the brain\u2019s not doing too hot.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

Other former colleagues of Trump are also speaking out. Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer during Mr Trump\u2019s first term, told the journalist Jim Acosta that the president is \u201ca man who is clearly insane\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With a grandfather sinking into dementia, the best hope is often of some kind of family intervention. The Republican family is going to have to find a way to intervene\u2014and soon. A failure to act has unknowable consequences.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week in this space I suggested that maybe Donald Trump was not quite all there. I would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-591179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}