Talk about the President’s mental health never sat well with me.
Yes, he can be crass, he rambles incoherently at times, he seems wildly insecure, and when it comes to his critics, he has the discipline of a mid-tantrum toddler, but all that never made it an acceptable exercise to engage in speculation about his mental stability.
But thanks to a pair of vicious and imprudent tweets Thursday morning, I think we can safely wonder if Donald Trump is all right.
Maybe he needs therapy. Or a good cry. Perhaps he never felt loved as a child. Exercise might help. And I hear bonsai is a healthy outlet for redirecting anxiety and rage. Either way, healthy, happy people do not behave like this.
In the wake of being criticized by “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski for a reported incident involving Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Trump took to Twitter — his favorite tantrum outlet — to cut them down to size.
“I heard poorly rated @Morning Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”
There’s a lot to unpack here.
For one, I wonder if it’s the first time a sitting US president used the kindergarten phrase “how come” in what press secretary Sean Spicer has called “official statements.”
For another, there are photographs of Brzezinski and Scarborough at Trump’s Florida estate on New Year’s Eve, so if he “said no,” they were crashers and should have been forcibly removed.
Also, if he doesn’t watch the program, does he have a staffer inform him of any time they say something critical of him? That would seem the mark of a man who had some serious issues. And a staffer with a heavy workload.
But obviously, the most alarming part of the tweets was his repulsive attack of Brzezinski. When it comes to women, Trump seems consistently paralyzed in the body and mind of an adolescent, pimple-faced boy who thinks of girls only in the binary terms of “hot or not.” If he isn’t trying to sleep with them, he is calling them ugly.
In one sense, his lashing out about her appearance is totally unsurprising.
Trump has called women who were critical of him “pigs” and “slobs,” and he’s joked about sexually violating women he found attractive. On the campaign trail he mocked a prisoner of war and a disabled journalist, for crying out loud. He’s not a man with any real sense of decency or filter.
So that he would stoop so low, yet again, despite occupying the highest office in the land, isn’t all that shocking.
But it is disappointing, embarrassing and even revolting. Trump’s childish behavior isn’t just impulsive and impolitic — it’s worrisome. The President of the United States should have too full a plate, too serious an agenda and too solid a constitution to rant about a woman’s looks on Twitter.
Trump’s lack of self-control should concern not just voters but foremost his family. From his wife, Melania, to his children, all should check in with him to ask, “Are you OK?”