Is Trump in the middle of a meltdown?
There is one question for which I have no answer.
Do we still live in the same world in which Donald Trump thinks he’s living?
In recent weeks, he’s developed more than just his usual erratic behavior.
He now seems close to having a complete meltdown.
The pressures of the possibilities of an embarrassing (for him) economic downturn, and the prospects of a Democrat – any Democrat – poised to take his job come November of 2020 appear to be weighing heavily on him.
He’s flailing away, and he doesn’t seem to care who feels the brunt of it.
He’s even attacking, of all folks, Fox News.
Last week, after Fox News failed to perform as if’s his own private news network, Trump called it “HOPELESS & CLUELESS.”
He got so vexed, he revealed how he thought the network should cater to him.
“The New @FoxNews is letting millions of GREAT people down! We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us anymore!” he tweeted.
The part about Fox News not “working for us anymore,” is quite troubling.
Does he really think Fox News only exists for his benefit?
Trump’s apologists jumped in to explain that by “us” he meant all Americans or something.
Sorry.
That didn’t wash.
That was one of several times Trump’s spokes-folks have been deployed to clean-up his ever-increasing, thoughtless statements.
While he was taking part in the recent G7 conference, he skipped a critical panel on climate change.
When asked why he was the only one of the seven world leaders who failed to show, his press people claimed he’d been in face-to-face discussions with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while the climate meeting was taking place.
There are those things we call cameras.
Those cameras take what we call pictures.
Those pictures they took of the climate change meeting clearly showed that both Merkel and Modi were seated at the table, while there was an empty seat where Trump was supposed to have been seated.
Later, when asked to defend his absence – he fumbled around and he blurted out, “I am an environmentalist.”
We can expect that Trump will find himself more than an arm’s length from the truth.
That’s just him.
Recently, though, he’s manufactured more lies, and with higher frequency than normal. (Did I just write the word “normal” for the number of lies told by an American president? I’d say that’s quite abnormal)
While overseas, Trump bragged to reporters that North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un and his wife Melania got to know each other, and they got along quite well.
That’s not true.
They’ve never even met each other. On the three occasions Trump and Kim have met, Melania Trump wasn’t around.
When that was pointed out, White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham leaped into action.
What follows is an example of the heavy burden it must be for Trump’s folks to cover for him.
“President Trump confides in his wife on many issues including the detailed elements of his strong relationship with Chairman Kim – and while the First Lady hasn’t met him, the President feels like she’s gotten to know him too,” Grisham told reporters.
They must’ve
known each other by osmosis, I suppose.
It’s also apparent that Trump is in full curmudgeon mode lately.
He’s launched attacks – either on Twitter, or in the news media against Puerto Rico (and its supposed misuse of disaster aid), Elizabeth Warren (and the sizes of her campaign crowds, he claims aren’t as big as his crowds), the Washington Post (a frequent target), Barack Obama (an even more frequent target) and the Federal Reserve (because the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, just won’t lower interest rates).
Of course, there are all of those mini controversies, like hinting he’d like to buy Greenland, and his reported interest in nuking hurricanes.
There are times these days that seem to indicate he’s only a few tweets shy of coming completely unhinged.
And I’m far from the only person who thinks this way.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV-news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.