The Real Question: Is Trump’s Dictatorship Dementia-Driven or ‘Just Trump’?
“I watched Trump shout nonsense from the roof, lie on CNBC, and push racist garbage...and I’m supposed to pretend this is normal?” - Ben Meiselas / MeidasTouch Network
Out MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow is right. "We do now live in a country that has an authoritarian leader in charge. We have a consolidating dictatorship in our country," Rachel said Monday night, Aug. 4. "The question is no longer how to prepare for this risk or how to try to avert it, but rather how to fight it now that it is here and in effect."
We do have questions. How do we fight the corrupt Trumpification of America? How do we make words like “unacceptable” mean anything when heavily armed federal officers, some on horseback and in armored vehicles, sweep an empty MacArthur Park three days after Independence Day as a “show of force?” What do we do when people of color are being snatched off the streets by masked secret police indiscriminately using racial profiling? How do we prevent renditions to privatized "black site prison camps" like Florida’s “Allegator Alcatraz” - possibly coming soon to a state you love - or CECOT in El Salvador?
Do lawsuits matter? Yes, and thankfully there are scads of lawsuits to provide records of what’s happening in this era of Trump’s reckless overreach for unbridled power.
And there are moments when Trump’s gauche violence-inducing gaslighting clashes with reality. In June 2024, for instance, the Supreme Court gave Trump broad immunity for some actions while he’s president. But, as of now, he is not shielded from the still unpaid $88.3 million in two cases brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, both on appeal and presumably headed to the Supreme Court.
"Dissatisfied with the outcome of the judicial process, Trump now asks this Court to set aside that [federal] jury verdict on the theory that he was actually immune from judicial review all along," Carroll's out attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote last January in her filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She won; Trump lost.
Trump’s immunity from judgement in Carroll’s civil cases were again argued last June. In their 2024 immunity decision, Kaplan said, “the Supreme Court reiterated a fundamental principle of our democracy: The president is not above the law.” The appeals court, Politico reported she reiterated, has already decided “that presidential immunity can be waived, and that Trump waived it here. That’s the law of the case. It controls the outcome.”
We’ll see if SCOTUS takes up Trump’s appeals, and how they respond to the anticipated extreme pressure from the dictator and his MAGA followers.
But the REAL question – the one many are too afraid to ask out loud but the one SCOTUS and all of us should consider the most important -- is Donald Trump in charge of his mental faculties?
Is Trump’s dictatorial behavior dictated by dementia or is he just being more of the unbalanced swaggering Donald Trump he’s always been – the accused golf-cheating, habitually lying, soulless politician SCOTUS and White Christian Nationals deem deserving of special immunity?
Many thought “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert was fired by CBS parent company Paramount in order to get a merger deal okayed by the Trump administration. But others thought it was because Colbert was too brazenly honest, such as saying Donald Trump’s “cognitive decline was on full display” at a series of events.
For instance, in 2024, Colbert showed clips of Trump trying to define the word “grocery” and then, while at a rally in Detroit, trashing the city of Detroit as if he didn’t care if his backers cared.
“Trump also held a rally in Arizona where his brain continued to die a very public death,” Colbert said, showing footage of Trump struggling monumentally to acknowledge a group of Assyrian supporters. “They should have given him a simpler ethnicity to pronounce,” Colbert cracked. “Like, was anyone in the crowd from grocery?”
Last June, as Trump was sticking it to liberals at the Kennedy Center, Colbert played video of an interview before a performance of the musical “Les Misérables.”
“I’ve seen it, we’ve seen it a number of times,” Trump said. “It’s fantastic.”
But then Trump was asked if he identifies more with Jean Valjean or Javert.
“That’s a tough one. The last part of that question, that’s tough, I think,” he said, turning to Melania. “You better answer that one, honey, I don’t know.”
Colbert almost shrieked. “What do you mean you don’t know? Javert is the bad guy! You just said you’ve seen the show a number of times. Is that number zero?”
Or, Colbert pondered, “it is possible Trump doesn’t remember who the characters are because his brain is wet bread.”
There have long been reports of Trump rambling, often digressing into inappropriate comments such as last May when the thrice-married famous womanizer warned cadets about trophy wives at their West Point graduation.
And then there was the 90 minute July 9 Cabinet meeting where he did a comedic impression of Jewish Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who he said has “abandoned the Jews” and “become a Palestinian.” He also said the B-2 bombers that attacked Iran “went skedaddle,” then tried to define the word “skedaddle” by asking: “Do you know the word skedaddle? It means skedaddle.”
Trump was greatly offended by a question about Jeffrey Epstein, calling it a “desecration” to talk about Epstein during a time of “some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas.”
And then he talked about the Oval Office décor, going on “at length” about moldings and if they would look better in gold leaf or gold-colored paint.
Fox News cut away from their live broadcast and social media kicked up a storm, some posting on X “Rambling Man - 25th Amendment NOW Please.”
And then Tuesday, Aug. 5, Ben Meiselas posted this on MeidasTouch Network:
- “What the heck was that?
This morning, Donald Trump, caked in orange makeup and and looking as unwell as ever, was wandering around the roof of the White House yelling at the press. He was making bizarre hand gestures and shouting things like, “I pay for everything!” and “I’m spending all my money!” It was completely bizarre, to say the least. And if the media did their job, they would rightfully be questioning his mental state….
Trump also called into CNBC this morning, where the MAGA-friendly hosts treated him with kid gloves, as always. What followed was a string of lies, racist dog whistles, and utter nonsense. He claimed that undocumented immigrants are “built” for farm work and said they naturally have good backs because if they get back injuries, “they die.” Then, in a stunning moment of racism you won’t see any headlines about, he implied Black Americans aren’t good at farm labor, saying “we’ve tried” but “they don’t do it.”
Crickets from the legacy media.
Yes, this was aired on a financial news network. Instead of talking about the real economy, the corporate media gave a platform to a man spouting plantation-era garbage and acting like a lunatic….
He then raved about tariffs on medicine, randomly naming numbers like 150%, 250%, which would explode the cost of prescription drugs for every American. And when confronted with polling that shows him deep underwater (in the 30s), he just said the polls are fake and that he’s actually in the 70s. No serious pushback. No reality check….
And finally, he admitted that he’s trying to rig congressional maps in Texas to grab five seats from Democrats. On live TV….
All of this would be laughable if it weren’t so terrifying. Trump is an unstable man who lies every time he opens his mouth. He’s not just a danger to himself; he’s a danger to democracy, to truth, and to every single person who believes in a functioning, sane government.
This isn’t politics and I don’t know about you, but I am sick of this being normalized. It’s a cult leader on a national stage, raving on rooftops, babbling lies on TV, and being enabled by a media ecosystem too cowardly to say the obvious: the man is unfit.
We have to keep speaking the truth. That’s why I’m here. That’s why you’re here. Let’s keep growing this movement. Let’s blast through the lies and hold the line for reality.” -
So Rachel’s right. We must ask questions – including whether Trump has dementia or America’s dictator is just a dangerous idiot?