SOME people say that Donald Trump isn’t mad, but that the US president pretends to be mad in order to throw his political enemies off balance.
However, respected opinion around the world is hardening to the view that the man really is mad.
Last week Trump appeared to endorse a view that India is a “hellhole”.
And ahead of King Charles’s visit to the White House, there was a report suggesting the US could review its position on Britain’s claim of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. This was to punish those countries which had not supported him in his war against Iran.
At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last Sunday (26), after a gunman fired shots in an attempt to barge into the ballroom, the president declared: “I wasn’t worried. I understand life. We live in a crazy world.”
The irony of that remark clearly escaped him, because he has contributed more than his fair share to producing a crazy world. There have been other erratic American presidents, but history will confirm his mental condition was such he should have been removed from office.
The comments about India were made last week by conservative commentator Michael Savage in an episode of The Savage Nation talk radio show: “A baby here becomes an instant citizen, and then they bring the entire family in from China or India or some other hellhole on the planet. That there’s almost no loyalty to this country amongst the immigrant class coming in today, which was not always the case. No, they’re not like the European Americans of today and their ancestors.”
An AI-generated image depicting him as JesusGetty Images
Trump posted a transcript of the show on his Truth Social account without any comments. He has previously issued a directive seeking to restrict birthright citizenship in the United States, a move that has been challenged in the US Supreme Court.
India’s main opposition Congress party called the “hellhole” remark “extremely insulting and anti-India. It hurts every Indian.”
“Prime minister Narendra Modi should take up this matter with the US president and register a strong objection,” the party said on X.
Indian government data shows nearly 5.5 million people of Indian origin live in the United States. Many of them are in top jobs. Trump and Modi enjoyed warm ties during the president’s first term, but relations cooled after India was hit last year with some of the highest US tariffs, many of which were rolled back this year. India and the US are now working on a trade deal aimed at preventing any renewed increase in tariffs and boosting sales to each other.
“The remarks are obviously uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste,” was the response of the Indian external affairs ministry spokesperson, Randhir Jaiswal. “They certainly do not reflect the reality of the India-US relationship, which has long been based on mutual respect and shared interests.”
The US embassy in Delhi sought to minimise the damage with a conciliatory statement: “The president has said ‘India is a great country with a very good friend of mine at the top’.”
In the US, the Hindu American Foundation, an advocacy group, said it was disturbed by the “hateful, racist screed”.
“Endorsing such rants as the president of the United States will further stoke hatred and endanger our communities, at a time when xenophobia and racism are already at an all-time high,” it wrote on X.
With Britain, the “special relationship” has been effectively wrecked by Trump.
More and more people, in America and elsewhere, are coming round to the view that Trump is not a well man. This is disturbing in the extreme, given it’s his finger on the nuclear button. He has caused widespread chaos and carnage and turned the world economy upside down.
Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who recently broke with Trump, advocated using the 25th Amendment, telling CNN that threatening to destroy Iran’s civilisation was “not tough rhetoric, it’s insanity”.
Candace Owens, the far-right podcaster, called him “a genocidal lunatic”.
Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, said Trump “does babble and sounds like the brain’s not doing too hot”.
Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer in Trump’s first term, told the journalist Jim Acosta that the president is “a man who is clearly insane” and that his recent string of belligerent, middle-of-the-night social media posts “highlights the level of his insanity”.
Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary for Trump, wrote online last week that “he’s clearly not well”.
Democrats have pressed the point in recent days. Trump is “an extremely sick person” (senator Chuck Schumer of New York), “unhinged” and “out of control” (representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York) or, more bluntly, “batshit crazy” (representative Ted Lieu of California). Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, has written to the White House physician requesting an evaluation, noting “signs consistent with dementia and cognitive decline” and “increasingly incoherent, volatile, profane, deranged, and threatening” tantrums.
In the Times of London, columnist Matthew Parris was direct in a piece headlined: “Trump is too deranged to continue in office. Republicans can no longer deny the depth of the president’s cognitive decline and should act for the good of the party.”
He began: “To say someone has lost his mind can carry a range of meanings. Accusations of mental instability may be merely a kind of insult, bandied around cheaply in politics, and not a serious diagnosis. But when I say the president of the United States is insane, I must make clear that this is not meant as playground abuse. I mean Donald Trump is mentally ill; that he is of unsound mind; that he is suffering from substantial cognitive decline.
“Imagine he worked in a bank. Or as a British Airways pilot. Or as your local solicitor or GP. In none of these roles would he be allowed to keep working.”
Parris argued: “An early and critical sign that somebody is of unsound mind is when they begin to act, react or communicate in ways that even at the most obvious level are not in their own interest. Lashing out in personal terms at the Pope, for example, if you lead a country with a huge Catholic population; in one breath declaring that another country’s nuclear capability has been destroyed, and in another declaring that it represents an immediate threat. Or posting on your Truth Social account an image of yourself in red and white robes with light shining from your hands healing the afflicted, with a fighter jet and American symbols in the background.”
JD VanceGetty Images
He added: “The president has surrounded himself with a ragtag platoon of close collaborators who must see his derangement all too clearly but, should he fall, must fall with him, and so stay silent.”
Parris speculated: “When a president is removed, his vice-president automatically succeeds to the role. So (assuming he aims to run for the presidency) JD Vance will have to make some difficult calculations if Trump hits serious turbulence this autumn. Take his chances by Trump’s side, or detach himself early?”
Parris concluded: “Can and will Trump be successfully impeached? If he can, and is, Vance will become president for two years. Would that be a good footing for a run in 2028? Or would he do better to define himself properly, and soon, against a failing president?
“Those who grasp a truth before its appointed arrival in political history must face hilarity, but we do not care: we know that in time everyone will be saying that evidence of Donald Trump’s personal disintegration was visible from the start. I say it now.”
For all these reasons, Indians shouldn’t get too upset Trump has called the country a “hellhole”.
