Donald Trump goes off the rails during phone call with Putin

| 9:18 pm EDT March 20, 2018
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After Russian President Vladimir Putin once again rigged his own reelection this week, Donald Trump made noise with what he didn’t say: he didn’t offer Putin congratulations – at least not initially. But after Russian officials publicly hinted that Trump needed to do so, he went ahead and congratulated Putin during their phone call today. Now we’re learning the extent to which Trump’s handlers had gone in begging him not to do it.

Trump’s national security advisers gave Trump notes for the phone call and included the word “DO NOT CONGRATULATE” in all capital letters, according to a new Washington Post report (link). This confirms a few different things about where Trump’s head is at, and none of them are particularly good news for anyone involved.

First, this tells us that Trump’s remaining handlers in the White House have absolutely no ability to influence him on even the most basic of matters. Hope Hicks seemed to be the last person in the building who could convince him to avoid some of his most self destructive behaviors, and her recent departure has coincided with a marked downturn in his stability, as evidenced by his rapidly deteriorating behavior. Second, Trump is every bit as much of a Russian puppet as his detractors have long claimed, and he’s far more worried about doing right by Putin than he is about the damage it might do to what’s left of his collapsing presidency.

Third, because Donald Trump’s own handlers are the stated source of the WaPo report, this tells us that they’re worried enough about Trump’s mental state to leak this kind of thing to the media, apparently in the hope of either getting him to see the error of his ways or in the hope of getting him ousted. Finally, this furthers the premise that Donald Trump is so deep into mental or psychological decline as to be barely functional. When his handlers have to write things this basic in all caps to try to get him to behave in a certain way, we’re not talking about a properly functioning human being.