THURSDAY: We continue to beat a dead horse!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2026

Ty Cobb is plain spoken: Ty Cobb isn't a medical specialist. He's a high-end Washington lawyer who worked under President Trump for a bit less than a year, though he says he never voted for him.

That's how Washington lawyering frequently works. The overview goes like this:

Ty Cobb (attorney)

Ty Cobb (born 1950) is an American lawyer. He was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland in 1981–86. He has been a partner at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C. From July 2017 until May 2018, he was a member of the Trump administration legal team, though he has stated he never voted for Trump.

[...]

For nearly a year, Cobb managed White House matters related to FBI Director Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Having been recommended to President Donald Trump by John Dowd (a member of Trump's private legal team), Cobb joined the White House internal legal team on July 31, 2017 and reported directly to Trump. Cobb said he accepted the assignment because "it was an impossible task with a deadline" and because "I have rocks in my head and steel balls."

[...]

On May 2, 2018, Cobb announced that he was retiring as White House special counsel at the end of the month. He issued a statement that "it has been an honor to serve the country in this capacity at the White House. I wish everybody well moving forward."

Cobb stated on October 22, 2018, that he did not think the Mueller investigation was a "witch hunt," as Trump repeatedly called it in the press. He repeated that assessment in an ABC News interview on March 5, 2019, adding that he thought that Mueller was "an American hero."

That gives you some basic background. Cobb reported directly to President Trump, then seems to have beaten a bit of a hasty retreat. (There could always be more to the story.)

Stylistically, we'd say that Cobb is plain spoken. Last night, speaking to CNN's Erin Burnett, he offered a striking assessment of President Trump. We'll highlight his most striking claim:

COBB (1/21/26): You know, he can’t get into a sentence without raising a grievance. And he can’t get in, get into a sentence and find his way out without either, you know, asserting some revenge-based point, you know, some fantasy, delusional fantasy such as the alleged rigged election, which Bill Barr made clear to him was not the case before having to resign because of the coup that Trump wanted, or without drawing glory to himself, suggesting that, you know, he ended eight plus wars. You know, nobody knows what they were. 

You know, this is. this is a—this is a man who is who is demented, and his narcissism has run amuck. And I don’t think there’s anybody outside the boundaries of the United States who believes for a second that Trump is sane at this stage of the game, and those in the United States are merely in denial or [are] so invested in him, they can’t, they can’t accept what their lying eyes tell them.

Including physicians. Dr. Jonathan Reiner, one of our, you know, leading cardiologists in the country who’s a frequent CNN guest, you know, calling on Congress to have hearings on his fitness.

So spoke the barrister Cobb. He isn't a medical specialist, but he is familiar with President Trump. His most striking assessment was this:

I don’t think there’s anybody outside the boundaries of the United States who believes for a second that Trump is sane at this stage of the game.

"Sane" is not a technical term. Other words in that rumination—narcissism, delusional—actually are, at least in the hands of a specialist.

This was not the first recent occasion on which Cobb held forth like this. CNN is willing to hear this sort of thing from a barrister, but under prevailing rules of the game, they won't be willing to interview carefully chosen medical specialists about this state of affairs.

Our guess would be that this is a tragic situation in which some sort of cognitive decline may be layered on top of a pre-existing (technical term) "personality disorder." No one chooses to be so afflicted, but the outcome can be very bad.

We're beating a dead horse with this topic. In closing, please notice this:

CNN has plainly mis-transcribed what Cobb plainly said. Below, you see what he actually said—and you see the CNN transcription:

What Cobb actually said:
I don’t think there’s anybody outside the boundaries of the United States who believes for a second that Trump is sane at this stage of the game.

What the CNN transcript says: 
 I don't think there's anybody outside the boundaries of the United States who believes for a second that Trump is saying at this stage of the game.

What the news report at Mediaite says:
 I don't think there's anybody outside the boundaries of the United States who believes for a second that Trump is saying at this stage of the game.

The videotape is available at Mediaite; you can hear what Cobb plainly said. But as you can see by clicking this link, the outlet failed to correct CNN's transcription mistake. Cobb's most striking assertion is also mis-transcribed there!

Everybody makes mistakes. Also, this is the world we have chosen.