Donald Trump has no idea what’s even going on

| 8:22 pm EDT April 26, 2020
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When the news broke last night that Donald Trump was preparing to scapegoat and fire HHS Secretary Alex Azar, it was painfully clear that the leak had been planted in the media by Trump’s own team. It’s the only place such a leak could have come from, and it had to have been intentional.

But based on a series of angry tweets about the leak today, Donald Trump seems almost genuinely offended that this would leak. Yes, he’s lying every time he opens his mouth. But this feels different. He seems almost caught off guard by this leak, to the point that he seems to genuinely believe it’s fake. Except, again, it could only have been leaked by the people closest to him.

This suggests that Donald Trump is now so far gone, his own handlers (Pence, Stephen Miller, whoever is left) are all but completely running the show on his behalf. Moreover, they’re not even running their moves past Trump anymore. One or more of his handlers decided it was time to scapegoat Azar in a desperate attempt at shifting the blame away from Trump, and put it into motion last night, without Trump even knowing. Presumably the handler was planning to tell Trump about it after the fact.

Donald Trump appears to have almost no idea what’s going on inside his own administration. That’s not surprising, considering his public behavior of late suggests that he’s sunk at last 50% of the way into senility. He’s no longer capable of calling the shots, so his babysitters are doing it for him. But what happens when Trump realizes he’s no longer in charge? This could get ugly fast.