Donald Trump is so far gone, he doesn’t know the National Anthem
Donald Trump has spent the week fending off accusations, largely from his own current and former staff, that he’s mentally incompetent. He went so far as to declare himself a “very stable genius” on Twitter, which only served to raise more questions about his mental competence. This has led to his every move being examined, to try to figure out if he really is as broken-brained as alleged. Trump didn’t help himself when he appeared at the college football national championship game and, well, tried to sing along to the National Anthem.
When the television cameras focused in on Trump singing the anthem for a full line of the song, he appeared to only get one word correct. His lips didn’t fit any of the words being sung, until he seemed to recover at the end to maybe get “gleaming’ correct. Maybe Trump was just so distracted by the increasing odds that he’ll go to prison in his Russia scandal, he forgot to sing along. But considering that the man has spent the past several months displaying worsening mental competence issues, the anthem incident predictably led to questions about whether he might no longer be able to remember the words.
Various comments on Twitter ranged from “The President of the United States pretty obviously doesn’t know the National Anthem” to “His brain is broken.” This incident probably would have gone unnoticed if not for the fact that we’re currently in the midst of a national debate – driven partly by Trump himself – about whether or not he’s mentally ill and/or senile. Trump has been routinely getting confused and wandering off in the middle of his own joint press conferences and signing ceremonies, only to be led back by his staff. He can’t put a coherent sentence together when speaking in public. He sometimes slurs his words.
There is clearly and visibly something wrong with Donald Trump; this has all gone too far to be an act. It does raise the question of whether perhaps his family and advisers are trying to set him up for a mental incompetence defense in the Russia scandal. They know he’s in rapid decline. Why would they send him out on the field during the National Anthem of a championship football game, knowing he’s too far gone to know the words anymore, unless they wanted everyone watching at home to see that he’s senile?
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report