THURSDAY: The president made one of his ludicrous claims!

THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2026

It's the absolute truth, Gutfeld said: Is something wrong with President Trump? 

Yesterday, he did a drop-in at the Supreme Court. Following that, he placed a familiar crazy claim right there on Truth Social.

Headline included, Mediaite reports:

‘STUPID’: Trump Rages Over Birthright Citizenship After Leaving Supreme Court Early

President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to rage about birthright citizenship just moments after oral arguments concluded in the highly-anticipated Supreme Court case on the issue Wednesday.

“We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president wrote on Truth Social. 

It was Trump’s first public comment on the case since he attended the beginning of oral arguments on Wednesday. He’s the first sitting president to attend oral arguments in a Supreme Court case and was there for roughly 80 minutes before leaving.

We're the only country that STUPID, the sitting president said. Simply put, the president loves this groaning misstatement. It's been corrected again and again and again, but he just continues to say it.

Wisely or otherwise, do other countries have birthright citizenship, the same way we do? As the Christian Science Monitor explains, virtually every country in North and South America has unrestricted birthright citizenship, just the way we do. 

That includes our immediate neighbors to the north and to the south. Under the fancy Latin heading Jus soli, the leading authority tattles: 

Jus soli

[...]

Canada: Subsection 3(2) of the Citizenship Act states that Canadian citizenship by birth in Canada—including Canadian airspace and territorial waters—is granted to a child born in Canada even if neither parent was a Canadian citizen or permanent resident except if either parent was a diplomat, in service to a diplomat, or employed by an international agency of equal status to a diplomat. However, if neither parent was a diplomat, the nationality or immigration status of the parents does not matter. 

Mexico: Article 30 of the Constitution of Mexico states that persons born in Mexican territory are natural-born citizens of Mexico regardless of their parents' nationality. The definition of "territory" includes vessels/aircraft flagged to Mexico travelling in international waters or airspace. 

The leading authority provides a similar rundown for such South American countries as Argentina, Brazil and Chile (and on and on from there). Wisely or otherwise, virtually every country in the Americas has this unrestricted citizenship policy.

Having said that, so what? The president seems to prefer the bogus claim. 

(Does he possibly believe his false claim? We have no idea.)

At any rate, the president emerged from the hearing, then banged out his bogus claim. As if that wasn't bad enough, after that, along came The Five. 

Amazingly, the problem started with Jessica Tarlov, the program's twice-weekly liberal punching bag. During yesterday's second segment, she quoted the president's remark: 

TARLOV (4/1/26): ...and you know that today didn't go well because Donald Trump's Truth Social post, once he left, was, “We are the only country in the world stupid enough to allow birthright citizenship."  

He didn't say, "The government kicked butt." He didn't say, "We are going to win this thing." He said, basically, "I'm going to throw a temper tantrum." And a couple of—

At that point, the interruption came—in this case, from Greg Gutfeld. By the time the interruption had run its course, Gutfeld had told four million viewers that the president's statement was "the absolute truth"—and there was indication that Tarlov disagreed. 

Let the interruption begin! To see the exchange, click here:

[Continuing directly from above] 
GUTFELD: That was a fact! Is that not a fact? It doesn't matter? 

TARLOV: No, it actually doesn't matter, because you know how he behaves when he's excited about something. You know—

GUTFELD: So you're focusing on emotion and not the fact that's the absolute truth. 

Tarlov blustered a bit from there. She never said that the president's familiar claim is in fact crazily false.

In all honesty, Tarlov herself seemed to believe that the president's claim was accurate.  Gutfeld proceeded to tell four million souls that the president's crazy claim is "the absolute truth."

So it goes on the most-watched "cable news" show in our un-serious nation. We've never seen a major Blue American journalist comment on the imitation of life produced by the Fox News Channel in the form of this clown-car program.  

That happened during yesterday's second segment. During the third segment, the program gave birth to the latest plea by Jesse Watters. We'll touch on that prayer tomorrow.

At any rate, the president made one of his crazy clams. It's the absolute truth, Gutfeld said.

Tarlov never disagreed, and neither did anyone else. As a nation, the Blue with the Red, this is the clown car we've chosen. 

HEALTH: "Clearly insane," the lawyer said!

THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2026

But also, the clinical therapist's tale: "Clearly insane," the lawyer said on Tuesday night, speaking to Jim Acosta

The lawyer used some startling language. We take you to Mediaite's report about the lawyer's remarks:

Ex-Trump Lawyer Calls President ‘Clearly Insane’: ‘I Think He’s Gone’

Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb called the president “clearly insane” and argued his last night social media posts only further prove he’s mentally “gone.”

Cobb joined Acosta on his podcast The Jim Acosta Show on Tuesday evening where he blasted his former client, arguing his “screeds” on Iran and more in the dead of night on Truth Social highlight “the level of his insanity and depravity.”

“It’s not a surprise that we’re in this much trouble. It’s not a surprise given the fact that the cabinet will not invoke the 25th Amendment for a man who’s clearly insane. And this war highlights that. And these screeds that come out nightly, at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. or whatever time Trump decides to vent without oversight, it highlights the level of his insanity and depravity,” Cobb told Acosta. 

And so on from there. Cobb had made similar comments in the recent past, as we noted in yesterday morning's report. 

On Tuesday night, he went there again. 

Ty Cobb is a (highly regarded) lawyer—but he's not a medical specialist. Also, "insane" is not a clinical term, eye-catching though it may be.  

Is something wrong with President Trump? In the aftermath of last Thursday's televised "cabinet meeting," many observers have seemed to suggest that the answer is yes. 

As we've noted in the past few days, some of these observers seemed to be suggesting that the sitting president has experienced some sort of cognitive decline. Other observers seemed to be suggesting that the president may be afflicted with some version of "mental illness." 

On Tuesday, speaking with Acosta, Cobb took the latter route. But here we go again in this most restricted of all possible journalistic worlds: 

Cobb, a lawyer, isn't an experienced medical specialist. Because our major news orgs have all agreed that issues of mental health must be avoided in the political context, everyone else we've quoted in the past few days shares that same shortcoming. 

None of the observers we've cited have been medical specialists! But hold on:

In training, and within a limited range of clinical experience, Mary L. Trump, the president's niece, actually is such a specialist.

As we noted back on March 4, Mary Trump shared her current view of her uncle's health on Thursday evening, February 26. She spoke that evening with CNN's Erin Burnett, on Erin Burnett OutFront. 

The fact that she said it doesn't mean that it's right! But Mary Trump is a doctorate-wielding clinical therapist, and these are the views she expressed:

BURNETT (2/26/26): You've known him your whole life. Do you actually see a [cognitive] decline?

MARY L. TRUMP: I do, but I think it's important to remember that Donald has never been fit in any capacity. Obviously, what we're dealing with now are age-related cognitive declines. We're dealing with physical issues that the White House tries to cover over.

But this is somebody who for decades now has had serious, undiagnosed and untreated psychiatric disorders, which are only going to worsen, especially given the pressure he's under and given the cognitive and physical declines. 

Rightly or possibly wrongly, so said Mary Trump.  She seemed to say that her uncle has experienced an obvious cognitive decline—but it isn't just any such decline. In the view of Mary Trump, it's a cognitive decline which is layered atop decades worth of "serious psychiatric disorders."

Those were her assessments. We repeat them because they were offered, not because they just have to be accurate.

Her assessments may be inaccurate, but there her assessments stand. With respect to our mainstream American discourse—with respect to the modern practice of American journalism—a further fact should be noted at this time: 

Of all the people offering recent thoughts about the state of the president's health, Mary Trump is the only such observer who can be assumed to have some basic idea what she's talking about. 

She isn't a lawyer, and she isn't a pundit; she's an actual medical specialist! For that reason, it's almost amazing that CNN allowed her to go on the air and, however briefly, offer those medical assessments. 

For decades, American news orgs have all agreed—issues of mental health must never be discussed with respect to major political figures. In our view, that was always a very good rule—until the time came when it wasn't.

Now we're engaged in a great Red-Blue civil war, along with a war in Iraq. Many observers seem to be concerned about the state of the president's health. They're concerned about the state of his cognition, perhaps about the possibility of underlying "mental disorders."

Rightly or wrongly, many people hold such concerns; many others don't. In our view, such matters are always a human tragedy—but we think observers are almost surely right when they give voice to such concerns.

He's the most powerful person on the planet. In fairness, you are allowed to voice your opinion about his health at this perilous time--but you're only allowed to do so if you aren't a medical specialist. You're allowed to opine if there's no particular reason to think you know what you're talking about!

"Clearly insane," the lawyer said—but he's only a (very capable) lawyer. In her 2020 best-selling book, Too Much and Never Enough, Mary Trump gave a detailed assessment of her uncle's (many and serious) apparent "psychopathologies." 

We've quoted what she said in that book again and again and again. You've read those assessments nowhere else. For better or worse, her assessments were uniformly disappeared by the high-end political press.

Six years later, here we are. For better or worse, our journalists continue to play an understandable but debilitating game:

Lawyers can thunder as much as they like. No medical specialists need apply!  

Cognitive decline is a human tragedy. So is (serious) "mental illness."

Is the world's most powerful person possibly tangled in some such dangerous state of affairs? For better or worse, our journalists know the rules of the game:

What might medical specialists think? Our high-end journalists all know this:

Such people must never be asked!

Tomorrow: His fascinating opinion piece carried this headline:

We’ve Stopped Noticing That Trump’s Cabinet Meetings Are Completely Insane

WEDNESDAY: "Unrecognizable" lands in the Times!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 2026

Also, return of the whales: For some reason, the New York Times republished the article in yesterday's print editions, right on page A2. 

Originally, it seems to have appeared all the way back on February 5. Yesterday morning, the report by Dan Barry was back! Headline included, it started like this:

TIMES INSIDER
How Do You Write About a Slur?

In reporting on the resurgence of a word long regarded as a slur, we faced a challenge: Could we write about the inappropriate term—employed recently by, among others, the president of the United States—without using it?

Even here, in this Times Insider piece exploring that challenge, we again face a difficult question. How do we write about writing about a word that should be avoided?

The word is “retarded,” and it has been understood to be a slur against people with intellectual disabilities for nearly two generations. This is not news.

What is news is that after a steady decline in its usage, following a national campaign and federal legislation, the word has made a defiant comeback in some circles, in part because of its use by people of prominence. 

We're not sure we would have regarded the word in question as "a slur." That said, we certainly would never have used the word in question as an insult—and, like almost everyone else, we knew that other formulations were now regarded as less insulting, less hurtful.  

Based on three or four years of watching the Fox News Channel, we've also learned that certain people enjoy the practice of dishing such insults and using such words. A familiar name was there in the list when Barry named some recent users: 

(continuing directly)
In recent months the word has been resurrected by Elon Musk, the musician Kid Rock and the Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld. In a post on Truth Social in November, President Trump called Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota “seriously retarded,” and last month Harmeet K. Dhillon, the official overseeing the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, used “retards” in a social media post. I found this particularly striking, since the division’s responsibilities include protecting the rights of people with disabilities.

I have occasionally written about intellectual disabilities... I remember the word being bandied about in the schoolyards of my childhood in the early 1970s, particularly by bullies. Even then, many children avoided it; too hurtful. 

Even then, children in Iowa avoided the term. Today, on Fox, not so much!

Barry continued along from there—but sure enough, Greg Gutfeld was listed among the practitioners. Incredibly, Barry even ended up writing this about an earlier report about this same topic: 

We then sat down to write, only to grapple with a few challenges: When, how and how often should we use the word in a piece exploring its power to offend?

We did not want to simply paraphrase what Mr. Trump or Ms. Dhillon had written. We also quoted the podcaster Joe Rogan and Kid Rock to demonstrate the seemingly gleeful celebration of the word’s resurgence in some quarters. Mr. Rogan declared the word’s return “one of the great culture victories.” 

Say what? Joe Rogan once declared the word's resurgence to be “one of the great culture victories?" As a courtesy, we're going to assume that whatever it is he actually said, he had somehow been misunderstood. 

Sadly, also this: 

There are few ways to give offense which aren't actively relished by Gutfeld, who we regard as one the genuine "Unrecognizables" of the modern incel-adjacent, "conservative insult" era. 

For whatever reason, his desire to insult liberal women is one of the impulses he's sent out to satisfy each night at 10 o'clock Eastern. His gruesome loathing of women seems to be obvious—and sure enough:

Last Friday night, during his handful of opening jokes, there he went again! 

GUTFELD (3/27/26): Finally, a forty-foot whale washed up on a New York beach. 

Don't worry, though. The whale's next-of-kin have already been notified.

PHOTO: The women of The View

AUDIENCE: Laughter, hooting, applause 

In recent weeks, we've told you it seemed that he had been told to surrender this pitiful nightly pleasure. Last Friday night, the pleasure was back—and then, on Monday night, he decided to do it again:

GUTFELD (3/30/26): To aid the war effort in the gulf, the U.S. is considering sending SEAL Team 6. 

And if that doesn't work, they might even send in Whale Team 4.

PHOTO: The women of The View

AUDIENCE: Applause, cheering 

Suzanne Scott sends him out to do this every night. To our ear, the cheering rings out like a fire bell in the night. 

For the record, there is no insulting premise too stupid or too tired to please this kumquat's audience. In particular, there is no way to reassert male dominance that his tortured mind won't employ.

It isn't just the nightly return to braindead comparisons of the women of The View to horses and cows, to hippos and pigs, and to whales and generic "livestock." It's also the inane jokes about that time of the month, about the way women (and Asian-Americans) don't know how to drive, about how boring women's sports are, and even to pathetic displays like this: 

GUTFELD (3/30/26): Bill Maher is getting the Mark Twain Award for humor. 

Big deal! I'm getting the Shania Twain Award for being most likely to bang Shania Twain.

Sad! The next joke was the joke about the 40-foot whale.

(To his credit, he has stopped asking if Hunter Biden has started "banging" or "[BLEEP]ing" his mother, first lady Jill Biden. Back in 2024, we saw him go there three separate times. Producers let the word "banging" slither through, bleeped the more challenging term.)

He still likes to say that Taylor Swift is only a 5 or a 6. (Sad!) In such ways, a 61-year-old man who could apparently use some help is determined to set an ugly, stupid, braindead example for younger men of assorted ages. In fairness, the pay is good.

Final point:

High-end Blue America has completely accepted the braindead insults this fellow directs at women. Among our various tribal shortcomings, we Blues don't have a recognizable sexual politics, and we never have.

HEALTH: Is something wrong with the president's health?

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 2026

Cognition v. "mental illness:" This morning, it has come to this, in this most rapidly changing of all possible worlds.  

The person whose health has been in question has granted an interview to The Telegraph's Connor Stringer. Dual headline included, this is the way the Stringer report begins: 

Trump interview: I am strongly considering pulling out of Nato
Exclusive: US president tells The Telegraph alliance is a ‘paper tiger’ and claims UK does not even have a navy

Donald Trump has told The Telegraph he is strongly considering pulling the United States out of Nato after it failed to join his war on Iran.

The US president labelled the alliance a “paper tiger” and said removing America from the defence treaty was now “beyond reconsideration”.

It is the strongest sign yet that the White House no longer regards Europe as a reliable defence partner following the rejection of Mr Trump’s demand that allies send warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Mr Trump was asked if he would reconsider the US’s membership of Nato after the conflict.

He replied: “Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by Nato. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.”

He and Vlad are on the same page, as is frequently true. As an aside, we'll mention the fact that there exists in the psychological literature a variety of writings about the so-called "Samson Syndrome"—alternatively, "Samson's Complex"—which you can find described if you simply google around.

At any rate there the president went, threatening to walk out on NATO. Meanwhile, is there some such thing as a British Navy? The leading authority on the subject still seems to think that some entity called "The Royal Navy" continues to exist: 

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom, responsible for defending the UK, the Crown Dependencies, and the Overseas Territories from naval attack or invasion. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King. 

[...]

The Royal Navy maintains a fleet of technologically sophisticated ships, submarines, and aircraft, including two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, four Vanguard-class ballistic missile submarines (which carry the Trident strategic nuclear weapons), six Astute-class nuclear-powered attack submarines, six Type 45 guided missile destroyers, seven Type 23 frigates, eight mine-countermeasure vessels and twenty-six patrol vessels. As of December 2025, there are 63 active and commissioned ships (including submarines as well as one historic ship, HMS Victory) in the Royal Navy, plus 9 ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA). There are also four Point-class sealift ships from the Merchant Navy available to the RFA under a private finance initiative, while the civilian Marine Services operate auxiliary vessels which further support the Royal Navy in various capacities. The RFA replenishes Royal Navy warships at sea and, since 2024–25, provides the lead elements of the Royal Navy's amphibious warfare capabilities through its three Bay-class landing ship vessels. It also works as a force multiplier for the Royal Navy, often doing patrols that frigates used to do. However, most of the Royal Navy ships are not actually in a condition for deployment at sea due to lack of seaworthiness. That led the navy to borrow the German frigate Sachsen for a NATO mission in spring 2026. The situation was described by the media and politicians as a national embarrassment.

Presumably, the situation was described that way by some in the media and by some politicians. Aside from that, we're going to let the experts puzzle these matters out—the question of the Samson Syndrome, along with the challenged existence, and state of repair, of the Royal Navy itself. 

For today, NATO is a paper tiger, the sitting president has said—and he has said that Vladimir Putin knows that too. For that reason, the sitting president may pull the United States out of NATO—something he apparently isn't legally entitled to do. 

How simpler things seemed to be last Thursday when, at a televised "cabinet meeting," the president rambled on, for almost five minutes, speaking about the price of a good Sharpie pen.

"It's insane. It's insane," S. E. Cupp said that evening on CNN. Other observers have discussed that day's five-minute ramble about the Sharpies, included MS NOW's Katy Tur and that same channel's Lawrence O'Donnell. 

O'Donnell discussed the president's Sharpie monologue on last Thursday evening's edition of The Last Word. You can watch the tape of O'Donnell's analysis by clicking this link to the videotape provided by the program's web site.

What did O'Donnell say that night? As you'll see if you click that link, the web site offers this two-part thumbnail: 

Lawrence: Trump failed his own self-administered cognitive test while Iran’s regime was watching
MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell describes the Donald Trump the Iranian regime saw today: a wartime president fixated on cognitive tests, presidential pens and Sharpies while nodding off during a Cabinet meeting about war.

In his monologue that evening, O'Donnell discussed the Sharpies too. But before he did, he discussed the president's latest claim about the so-called cognitive tests he has long claimed that he just keeps "acing."  

Over the past six years, the president has repeatedly said that he has aced those challenging cognitive tests in a way few others have ever done. As transcribed by Tommy Christopher at Mediaite, here's part of what he said at last Thursday's cabinet meeting:

I’m the only president that ever took a cognitive test. I took it three times. It’s actually a very hard test for a lot of people. It wasn’t hard for me. But it’s a cognitive test. It starts off with an easy question. And by the time you get to the middle, it gets tougher. By the time you get to the end, very few people can answer those questions. They get very tough mathematical equations and things.

I took it three times. I aced it all three times in front of numerous doctors that I have no idea who they are. And I was told when I went in—they said Dr. Ronnie told me this. My current doctors are fantastic doctors. They said, “Well, if you take it—you know, it’s Walter Reed. It’s essentially a public hospital. And if you do badly, he’s probably going to get out.” But I aced it. I got them all right. And one doctor said, “I’ve never seen anybody get them all right. I’ve been doing the test for twenty years.”

Plainly, nothing can make the sitting president desist from making these claims!

As many others had done before him, O'Donnell ridiculed those claims on last Thursday's evening's program. He then proceeded to mock the president's lengthy discussion of Sharpies. 

As noted above, O'Donnell said the president had "failed his own cognitive test" in his pair of rambles at that day's "cabinet meeting." (We can't really tell you that O'Donnell's suggestion is wrong.)

Last night, at 10:10 p.m., O'Donnell seemed to take a different tack, describing the president as "a madman." (O'Donnell, speaking of the president's apparent current strategy in Iran: "That is how a madman wages war in the 21st century.") 

Out of that aggressive language an important question is born, along with an observation about our American journalism as it's currently practiced:

Back in the simpler days of last week, some observers seemed to be suggesting that the president is suffering some sort of cognitive challenge. On this campus, we have no way of knowing if that's true, but that's what some discussions seemed to suggest. 

Other discussions seemed to suggest something different. Those discussions seemed to suggest the presence of what might be called "mental illness." 

In those discussions, words like "insane" and "madman" began to surface again. Not long before, on March 19, MS NOW's Chris Hayes had said this:

"Every once in a while, you just have to remind yourself the president of the United States is a sociopath." 

That would seem to be a claim about (severe) "mental illness." Around that same time, one of the president's former lawyers had described him as "a demented narcissist" in yet another MS NOW appearance.

O'Donnell has often referred to the president as "delusional." Last night, he went with "madman," then alleged that the president had engaged in "pathological lying" again.

"Madman" isn't a clinical term. At present, neither is "sociopath." Having said that, we'll add his:

Based on the language they used, some of these observers seemed to be alleging some sort of cognitive shortfall. But based on the language other observers used, those observed seemed to be suggesting that the "madman / insane / sociopath" sitting president is afflicted with some version of (significant) "mental illness."

In the Babel of our flailing discourse, various suggestions have been voiced by an array of high-profile observers. We'll leave you today with this observation:

None of those people are medical specialists! Their claims and suggestions could always be accurate, but there's no obvious reason to assume that they actually know what they're talking about.

You've heard us say this before. Our news orgs have all signed on to a sacred pact—a sacred pact which goes like this: 

We will never speak to the medical specialists who, at least as a matter of theory, might have some basic idea what they're talking about!

Is the president suffering a cognitive shortfall? Might he be afflicted with some substantial "mental illness?"

Our journalists and our attorneys bring no expertise to such questions. Meanwhile, what has one trained clinical therapist recently said about all this?  As we continue to seek the president's health, we return to that question tomorrow.

The president wants to exit NATO. Is some sort of medical problem possibly lurking there?

Tomorrow: The clinical therapist's tale

Friday: Colby Hall's intriguing opinion piece