They took the car keys from President Biden!

THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2024

They've left the bombs in Trump's hands: In the case of President Biden, it was fairly easy for the press corps to identify the apparent problem. 

It looked like a type of problem which everyone had seen before, if only in classic films like Driving Miss Daisy or Under Golden Pond.

It looked like a type of "senility" or possibly "dementia." It looked like the type of problem which—as everyone persistently said—makes you take the keys away from an aging parent.

President Biden's apparent affliction seemed fairly easy to name. In the case of former president Trump. it has been much harder for our journalists to name his apparent or possible affliction.

The gentleman makes crazy statements with regularity, like the ones we noted yesterday afternoon. That said, he seems to be full of energy—and yes, he actually can complete sentences. He does so much of the time. 

Bowing to an ancient prohibition, our news orgs agreed that no one should discuss the possibility of some sort of severe mental illness. And so our major scribes—they aren't always especially sharp, and they aren't overwhelmingly honest—decided to brand Trump a LIAR and pretty much leave it at that.

That leaves us with a ranting person offering rants like the ones we mentioned yesterday. Also, it leaves us with a major, highly intelligent journalist writing am essay like the one Anne Applebaum just offered.

Applebaum is a very important journalist and author. She watched Trump's convention address, and she said she found it baffling. 

Eventually, he "digressed into pure gibberish," she says in her piece for The Atlantic. Here are the two examples she cited, exactly as they appear in The Atlantic, major typo and all:

They’re coming from prisons. They’re coming from jails. They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums. I—you know the press is always on because I say this. Has anyone seen The Silence of the Lambs? The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He’d love to have you for dinner. That’s insane asylums. They’re emptying out their insane asylums. And terrorists at numbers that we’ve never seen before. Bad things are going to happen.

Another:

In Venezuela, Caracas, high crime, high crime. Caracas, Venezuela, really a dangerous place. But not anymore, because in Venezuela, crime is down 72 percent. In fact, if they would ever in this election, I hate to even say that, we will have our next Republican convention in Venezuela because it will be safe. Our cities, our cities will be so unsafe, we won’t be able—we will not be able to have it there.

Applebaum described those excerpts as "pure gibberish." We can't really say we know why.

We aren't vouching for the accuracy of those presentations, which occurred shortly past the one-hour mark in one brief part of Trump's endless address. 

We aren't vouching for those presentations. As far as we know, Trump was making a set of (highly familiar) claims which are basically bogus.

Fact-checkers have widely stated that the picture he was painting there simply isn't accurate. But that doesn't mean that the statements are gibberish. They're part of a perfectly coherent set of claims which the candidate makes all the time—a perfectly coherent set of claims which seem to be grossly inaccurate.

What is Trump claiming in those excerpts? He's saying that governments in countries like Venezuela are emptying out their prisons and sending their criminals here.

Also, he's saying that governments are emptying their "insane asylums" and sending those people here. He's even supplying statistics about the drop in crime which has allegedly happened in countries like Venezuela. 

Alas! Fact-checkers have routinely said that his claims are unfounded and / or simply inaccurate. They've said that his statistics seem to have been made up. 

That said, it's easy to see what the gent is claiming. Why would someone as sharp as Applebaum describe those presentations as "gibberish?"

Before we proceed any further, at least three typos lurk in Applebaum's two examples. Here's what Trump actually said in that second example:

In fact, if they [the Democrats] would ever WIN this election—I hate to even say that—we will have our next Republican convention in Venezuela because it will be safe. 

Candidate Trump said "win," not "in." You can see that at the 67-minute mark of the C-Span videotape of his speech. 

As presented in The Atlantic, that second example didn't seem to make sense.  After correcting the typo, Trump's (very familiar) statement strikes us as easy to follow. The first example in The Atlantic also includes at least two typos, as you can see at the C-Span video's 65-minute mark.

That's amazingly sloppy work on the part of The Atlantic. Moving right along:

Presumably, Trump's statement about holding the next convention in Caracas wasn't mean to be taken literally. In fact, you can hear the audience laughing at several familiar parts of those two presentations.

Adjusting for such considerations, Trump was painting a familiar if inaccurate picture. He was claiming that our nation is being overrun by gangs of criminals and psychiatric patients who are being shipped here from foreign lands.

Why did those presentations strike Applebaum as "gibberish?" We have no idea. But beyond that, there lurks a larger question:

Is there something wrong in Donald Trump's head? If so, what is it?

Way back in 2017, Dr. Bandy C. Lee, a Yale psychiatrist, edited a best-selling book which carried this ominous title:

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President 

Rightly or wrongly, the medical specialists who contributed essays to the book claimed that Trump was, or seemed to be, (severely) mentally ill, in a way which was said to be dangerous. With the book's publication, the inevitable happened:

Major news orgs agreed that such claims must never be discussed. 

The book was therefore disappeared. Later, our journalists were willing to discuss President Biden's possible "dementia," as was completely appropriate. But they've never been willing to discuss the (fairly obvious and tragic) possibility outlined in Dr. Lee's best-selling book.

Instead, they settled for calling him a LIAR. Also, at a fairly recent point, they began saying that Trump was exhibiting the same signs that had become apparent with President Biden. As they struggled to make that case, they ignored the larger, more obvious problem.

Our journalist settled for calling him a LIAR. But what if it's worse than that? 

Applebaum watched his convention address and called those excerpts "pure gibberish." We don't know why such a prominent and intelligent person would settle for that diagnosis.

It's easy to see what Trump was saying in the excerpts Appelbaum offered. But why was Trump making those overwrought claim—and why does he persistently make claims which are even crazier?

Applebaum's guild has never been willing to puzzle that out. They've been willing to take the car keys from Biden while leaving the bombs in Trump's hands!