WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 2025
Delusional, dangerous conduct: Yesterday, we returned late in the day from our all-day medical outing. We hadn't had the chance to review President Trump's entire press event when we offered this report.
Yesterday's cabinet meeting / press event was truly one for the ages. Eventually, we came upon an additional report in Mediaite about one of the many peculiar things President Trump had said.
Headline included, Ahmed Austin Jr.'s report starts as shown below. In our view, Austin is reporting some delusional, highly dangerous behavior on the part of President Trump:
‘I Like to Watch the Enemy’: Trump Drops Wild Attack On CNN Reporter During Cabinet Meeting
President Donald Trump on Tuesday used his cabinet meeting to launch into another attack on CNN for its reporting on the strikes in Iran.
Following the U.S. military’s strikes on key Iranian nuclear facilities in June, CNN reported that early intelligence indicated that the damage was not total. Sources also told CNN that the strikes only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months. The goal of the mission was to wipe out the program entirely.
Since then, there have been conflicting reports on the severity of the attacks. The Trump administration has insisted that Iran’s nuclear program was destroyed, but after a briefing with top Trump cabinet officials, multiple members of Congress walked away with the belief that the damage was indeed minimal.
As all of this went on, Trump continued going after CNN—threatening to sue both CNN and the New York Times. He primarily took aim at [NAME WITHHELD], one of the reporters behind the initial story.
Yesterday, the president continued to assail that CNN reporter. In the wake of the Minnesota murders, it's amazing to see a sitting president continue to behave in such a reckless and dangerous way.
(For Rev's full transcript of the cabinet meeting / press event, you can just click here. Thank God for the invaluable Rev!)
In the passage from the Mediaite report, we've omitted the reporter's name. Here's some of what the sitting president said during yesterday's event. In the interest of cogency, we're omitting one misleading statement:
PRESIDENT TRUMP (7/8/25): [The attack on Iran] was a perfect military performance...I mean, those machines flew for 37 straight hours. They didn't stop. They went skedaddle.
You know the word skedaddle? That means skedaddle. They dropped the bombs and somebody said, "Skedaddle, let's get the hell out of here." And every bomb hit its mark and hit it incredibly....
We had a lot of fake reporting. mostly from CNN, where the scammer writer, a writer for CNN—who should be fired, by the way. She was involved with the 51 fake intelligence agents, if you remember that. She did that story, created a story out of it. She created a story out of the “laptop from hell,” saying it came from Russia, but it actually came from Hunter Biden’s bedroom or worse.
Just a scammer and she’s still at CNN, which is pretty amazing—but we’ll ask you a question about her. But they came up with this concept that maybe the attack wasn’t that good. And I saw it happen right after the attack. I saw this person on CNN. I actually watch. I like to watch the enemy. You learn from the enemy. And I watch because you have to know where they’re coming from.
The president went on from there. We're going to stop with his incredible statement that the CNN reporter is, and we quote, "the enemy."
Minnesota was only a few weeks ago, Already, we're back to that.
For the record, there was nothing wrong with the CNN journalist's report about the DIA's initial assessment of the bombing strike on Iran. Also, there was nothing wrong with her report for Politico, way back in October 2020, about the 51 intelligence agents who had signed a letter stating their tentative view about the Hunter Biden laptop.
In each instance, the CNN journalist was simply reporting an actual set of actual facts which had actually happened in the real world. The president continues to rant about these reports in a delusional, dangerous manner.
Is President Trump "lying" when he insists on angrily repeating his various bollixed tales? We know of no way to be certain.
As an alternative, is it possible that he actually is "delusional" in some diagnosable way? We don't know how to evaluate that possibility, but when delusional people believe crazy things, in theory they aren't "lying." Tragically, such people are stating a delusional, crazy belief.
Last night, Lawrence O'Donnell continued to assail the president as "the stupidest president in American history," largely with reference to the president's endless misstatements about the way tariffs work.
It's always possible that O'Donnell's assertion is accurate. On the other hand, O'Donnell also refers to the president's statements as "lies."
Alas! The L-bomb implies that the president knows his statements are false. The S-bomb may seem to imply that he's so dumb that he may think his statements are actually true.
Is something wrong with President Trump? In our view, O'Donnell's anger tends to keep him from making well-reasoned assessments.
For ourselves, we can't help wondering what a (carefully selected) medical specialist might say about this president's endless supply of ridiculous, repetitive statements—statements which are tied to his endless sense of persecution and to his endless supply of self-pity.
That said, the president's savaging of the CNN reporter is a deeply dangerous act. Yesterday, he actually called her "the enemy"—astoundingly, even that!
Minnesota was only a few weeks ago. That quickly, we're now back to that.
This is deeply disordered behavior. In our view, O'Donnell's simmering anger has him over his skis, and no one else seems to want to discuss the president's astonishing conduct.
