Donald Trump’s John McCain scandal is even uglier than we thought
When it was first reported yesterday that the Trump White House put a tarp over the name of the USS John McCain so that Donald Trump wouldn’t have to see the name of his deceased political rival, it was widely assumed that Trump himself was behind this stunt. But over the course of last night and today, it’s become fairly clear that Trump wasn’t behind it; his handlers were – and that makes it even worse for him.
It would have been bad enough if Donald Trump had told his people to hide John McCain’s name from his sight, in a fit of immature jealous overreach. But at this point it’s become clear that Trump’s handlers unilaterally made this decision without his knowledge. They went to great lengths to lean on the U.S. Navy to do something it surely didn’t want to do. Everyone involved had to have known that this could end up getting very ugly if word got out.
Yet Donald Trump’s handlers went to all this trouble, and took this big of a risk, because they were just that concerned that Trump might have had some kind of psychological breakdown if he’d seen John McCain’s name. Trump’s handlers spend every day with him behind the scenes. They know precisely what kind of condition he’s in – and they must have feared that such an incident could have triggered him to make the kind of scene that could have instantly finished off his presidency.
It would have been downright villainous if Donald Trump had told his people to hide John McCain’s name from his sight because he didn’t feel like seeing it. Instead, it’s downright scary that Trump’s people had to hide McCain’s name from his sight because they were afraid of the damage he might do to himself if he saw it. Just how mentally incompetent and psychologically fragile has Trump become behind the scenes? It’s got to be even worse than what we’re seeing on public display.
