Even Donald Trump’s staffers are worried about how far he’s gone off the deep end
If you’ve spent the past months observing Donald Trump closely, you’re aware that he’s the midst of some kind of cognitive and psychological collapse. If you observed his manic, inappropriate, and at times barely coherent tweets over the weekend, you’re aware that he’s now in total freefall. It turns out Trump’s own staff is so worried about this, they’ve become desperate to reverse public opinion on the matter.
Sometime over the weekend, even as Trump was tweeting the kind of toxically semi-coherent garbage that led many to wonder aloud if he was in the midst of a psychotic break, a telling story surfaced from Axios (). The story was that Trump had told his staff earlier this month that he was attempting to come off as a “crazy guy” so other world leaders would fear him. Here’s the thing: this story could only have come from Trump’s own staffers, and their only reason for leaking it would be if it were false.
Let’s say Trump’s strategy really is to come off as “crazy” so his adversaries will fear how far he might take things, and thus capitulate to him. If this were his strategy, his own staff would never leak it, because they’d be sabotaging what he’s trying to do. So we know this isn’t true. And there’s only one reason for Trump’s staff to make up a story like this: they know he’s slipped into a dangerously untenable place. They know it’s become so obvious that the public can see it. And they’re trying to counter it by floating this narrative that it’s all an act.
That may sound presumptive on my part. But let’s say this is really all an act on his part. In such case, why on earth would his staff go and blab that to the media? The only logical explanation is that his freefall is not an act, and his staff is now desperate to cover for it.
