(Dobbs) 43 Minutes In The Life Of Our President
Trump's reality zone is shrinking.
If we’re paying attention at all, we don’t really need more proof that Donald Trump has gone off the rails. To tweak the opening line from an Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet, “Let us count the ways.” The winless war, the exploding ego, the extrajudicial executions, the polemic about the pope, the unwanted arch and the less wanted new East Wing, and lest we forget, Greenland’s still there for the taking.
So yesterday, everyone from Forbes to the Daily Beast to historian Heather Cox Richardson here on Substack catalogued a succession of social media posts from the president that show us just how unhinged he has become. These are not just posts since the year started, nor just from last month, or last week, or even from a 24 hour day. Everything you are about to read— taking from Richardson’s list— is from less than an hour. 43 minutes to be specific, beginning at 11:03 p.m. Friday night and ending at 11:45.
All these posts in just 43 minutes! Is the man seriously unstable? As Fox News used to advertise, “We report, you decide.”
• 11:03 p.m.— An AI-generated image of himself, alongside Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, all shirtless, along with an unidentifiable woman in a bikini, appearing to be relaxing in a swimming pool. But the “swimming pool” was the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
• 11:04 p.m.— An image of First Lady Melania Trump grinning at the press conference Trump held after the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, when he said that incident proved he needed his proposed ballroom for his security.
• 11:13 p.m.— An image of House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is Black, holding a baseball bat. The caption calls Jeffries “low IQ,” “a THUG,” and “a danger to our Country.”
• 11:15 p.m.— An image of himself smiling and holding six wild cards from the game Uno. The caption read, “I HAVE ALL THE CARDS.”
• 11:22 p.m.— A profile image of himself in gold.
• 11:26 p.m— An image showing him standing near Mt. Rushmore, with the angle arranged to make his head the fifth sculpture on the mountain, so from left to right they were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and Donald Trump.
• 11:32 p.m.— An image of himself and the first lady.
• 11:37 p.m.— An image of himself and King Charles III.
• 11:40 p.m.— An image of what appeared to be the reflecting pool (near the Lincoln Memorial) full of algae next to one that appeared to be the reflecting pool clean and with a bright blue color. Above the dirty image was the label “Hussein Obama,” and below it, the caption “Photo taken Sept 29, 2012”; the clean one was labeled with “Trump” and “Coming Soon.” Over the two together, the caption read: “This is what our Country was before, and after, TRUMP!”
• 11:41 p.m.— An AI image of the reflecting pool appearing bright blue, under the caption “American Flag Blue.”
• 11:45 p.m.— Another AI image of the reflecting pool appearing bright blue under the caption “American Flag Blue.”
Is this normal? No. It wouldn’t be normal for the guy who takes your money at the checkout counter. But this is the president of the United States we’re talking about. The guy who can start wars on a whim, who can harm the economy on an instinct, and who has his finger on the nuclear button.
So it’s worse than just abnormal. It’s dangerous. Trump’s reality zone is shrinking. His late-night flurries of bizarre social media messages have come to be known as “midnight meltdowns.”
Those were the good old days. Today he is less stable by the hour. A president who drapes himself in self-adulation— a president who thinks it’s cute to “lounge” in the National Mall— is just not right in the head. Those who defend him by arguing it’s just “Trump being Trump” might be correct, but that only makes it worse because if this is Trump, it’s the farthest thing from normal. It’s not inspiring, it’s not sane, it’s not safe.