The question continues to be asked, “is Trump nuts?”

Trump descent into slurred and blurred madness is nearly complete

By Samuel Warde

Recent tweets and a recent interview containing a multitude of WTF moments makes one wonder if Trump is on the brink of madness.

The most recent example of his incoherence can be found in his oval office interview from July 25th with members of The Wall Street Journal.

That interview was conducted by Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Gerard Baker along with two other editors: Deputy Editor-in-Chief Matt Murray and Washington Bureau Chief Paul Beckett.

Two White House reporters were also in attendance: Michael Bender and Peter Nicholas.

Several articles were published from the interview, with Baker having the lead byline in the main piece. 

However, as Politico reports, The Wall Street Journal saw no need to publish the transcript of the entire interview. 

Politico quotes a Wall Street Journal spokesman as saying the paper is “proud of the on-the-record interview we conducted with President Trump, which produced multiple, newsworthy articles,” adding that: “We published the noteworthy excerpts from the interview. We saw no reason to publish the crosstalk that inevitably accompanies any conversation.”

Politico did publish the entire transcript this week and any quotes from that interview come from their publication and not the many published by The Wall Street Journal.

That interview, on its face, seems to remove any doubt that Trump’s apparent madness is nearly complete.

BuzzFeed published an insightful article on Tuesday detailing the “11 Most WTF Things Trump Actually Said” in the course of that interview. We will look at three examples of Trump’s blurred logic from that article before leaving you with some thoughts by conservative columnist Peggy Noonan.

EXAMPLE ONE:

BuzzFeed‘s first example of a WTF moment contains Trump’s remarks about his recent politicized speech before a group of Boy Scouts. Trump told The Wall Street Journal that “they love it,” adding that “I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful.”

However, BuzzFeed and Time Magazine report that the Boy Scouts of American organization told them that they are unaware of any call from their national leadership to the White House. 

The organization went on to state that “The Chief Scout Executive’s message to the Scouting community speaks for itself,” a reference to a July 27 statement from Michael Surbaugh, who apologized to anyone in the scouting community who might have been offended or alarmed by Trump’s “political rhetoric.”

“For years, people have called upon us to take a position on political issues, and we have steadfastly remained non-partisan and refused to comment on political matters. We sincerely regret that politics were inserted into the Scouting program,” Surbaugh wrote in his statement.

EXAMPLE TWO: 

Asked about the ongoing investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Trump lied and claimed that no one from his campaign “saw anyone from Russia.”

Here’s the good news: I was never involved with Russia. There was nobody in the campaign. I’ve got 200 people that will say that they’ve never seen anybody on the campaign…. There’s nobody on the campaign that saw anybody from Russia. We had nothing to do with Russia. They lost an election and they came up with this as an excuse. And the only ones that are laughing are the Democrats and the Russians. They’re the only ones that are laughing.

However, as BuzzFeed reports: “Trump’s own son, along with campaign manager Paul Manafort and a top adviser, agreed to a meeting with a Kremlin-linked attorney on the premise that she had dirt on Hillary Clinton. The White House also said the president later ‘weighed in’ on his son’s initial misleading statement about the meeting.”

EXAMPLE THREE:

Asked about job creation, Trump responded that if people can’t find work in their home town it’s okay to move elsewhere:

Where do we have the people? You know where we have the people? In New York state that can’t get jobs, in many other places that can’t get jobs. And people are going to have to start moving. They’re going to move to Colorado and they’re going to move to Iowa and Wisconsin and places where – like if Foxconn goes to Wisconsin, which is one of the places they’re very strongly considering – but if Foxconn goes to Wisconsin and they have a very low rate and the governor’s done an excellent job, you’re going to have a situation where you got to get the people.

But they’re going to start moving. And I’m going to start explaining to people when you have an area that just isn’t working – like upper New York state, where people are getting very badly hurt – and then you’ll have another area 500 miles away where you can’t – you can’t get people, I’m going to explain you can leave, it’s OK, don’t worry about your house.

You know, a lot of them don’t leave because of their house. Because they say, ‘Gee, my house, I thought it was worth 70,000 (dollars) and now it’s worth nothing.’ It’s OK. Go, cut your losses, right?”

PEGGY NOONAN:

We leave you with a brief review of some observations by conservative Peggy Noonan who absolutely emasculated Trump in her Wall Street Journal column last Thursday.

“The president’s primary problem as a leader is not that he is impetuous, brash or naive,” Noonan wrote. “It’s not that he is inexperienced, crude, an outsider. It is that he is weak and sniveling. It is that he undermines himself almost daily by ignoring traditional norms and forms of American masculinity.”

She went on to write that, instead of being a leader, Trump is “whiny, weepy and self-pitying. He throws himself, sobbing, on the body politic. He’s a drama queen.” Referring to his tweets, she writes that they demonstrate “utter weakness.” “It’s all whimpering accusation and finger-pointing: ‘Nobody’s nice to me. Why don’t they appreciate me?’”

Turning to her central point – that “Trump is Woody Allen without the humor,” Noonan talked about how masculinity used to be demonstrated in characters like Gary Cooper and John Wayne, but then things changed:

The new style was more like that of Woody Allen. His characters couldn’t stop talking about their emotions, their resentments and needs. They were self-justifying as they acted out their cowardice and anger. But he was a comic. It was funny. He wasn’t putting it out as a new template for maleness. Donald Trump now is like an unfunny Woody Allen.

Noonan concluded her piece with the following warning:

Meanwhile the whole world is watching, a world that contains predators. How could they not be seeing this weakness, confusion and chaos and thinking it’s a good time to cause some trouble? 

Samuel Warde is a writer, social and political activist, and all-around troublemaker.