UNDISGUISED: Madness is as madness does!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2026

Is this what madness looks like? No one has ever said that former ambassador Michael McFaul isn't thoroughly sharp. The leading authority on his career offers this pithy thumbnail:

Michael McFaul

Michael Anthony McFaul (born October 1, 1963) is an American academic and diplomat who served as the United States ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. McFaul became the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor in International Studies in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University in 1995, where he is the Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies...Prior to his nomination to the ambassadorial position, McFaul worked for the U.S. National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and senior director of Russian and Eurasian affairs...

McFaul is a high-ranking academic with several years of service as ambassador to Putin.

No one has ever said that he isn't perfectly sharp. Last night, he appeared on The Eleventh Hour and employed some colloquial language when discussing President Trump. 

Again, we're speaking of colloquial language. That said, his initial exchange with Stephanie Ruhle started exactly like this:

RUHLE (1/6/26): If the United States takes Greenland by force, would that not be one NATO country going after another? And if that takes place, wouldn’t that be the end of the NATO alliance? That feels monumental to me.

MCFAUL: I can’t stress enough how completely insane this idea is, on so many levels. 

McFaul continued from there, citing several major objections to the idea of taking Greenland by force. 

To see the video of this first exchange, you can click here. He ended this initial presentation with more colloquial language:

MCFAUL: I just think this is so insane, and we need to call it out as insane. Sorry if I [unintelligible]—but it's the craziest idea I ever heard of.

The proposal wasn't simply insane. It was also crazy.

No, Virginia! McFaul did not go on to cite a formal medical diagnosis of President Trump's mental health. Aside from that, "insane" and "crazy" aren't formal medical terms. 

McFaul was using colloquial language. That said, he was using the type of colloquial language which now pops up, with great regularity, when the behaviors and proposals of the sitting president come under journalistic review.

McFaul is not a medical specialist. That said, the president's niece is a doctorate-wielding medical specialist, and in her best-selling 2020 book, she referred to a vast sweep of "psychopathologies" as she discussed her "dangerous" uncle.

She was using clinical language. As we've noted again and again, she offered such clinical assessments as these:

MARY L. TRUMP (pages 12-13): I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label only gets us so far.

[...]

A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe forms is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

The fact is, Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for.

Her uncle may be afflicted by "sociopathy," she said, matching that colloquial language to "antisocial personality disorder," the technical diagnostic term. She said her uncle's behavior suggests the possible presence of quite a few other pathologies. 

As we've frequently noted, the fact that she said it doesn't mean that it's true. But her presentation raises an obvious question:

Do the "crazy ideas" McFaul derided stem from some such "personality disorder," whatever some such clinical diagnosis might actually mean? Are the crazy ideas of the sitting president the fruit of some (serious) mental health disorder?

Putting it another way, could the president be mentally ill?

Is President Trump, the sitting president, afflicted by some unknown array of clinical "psychopathologies?" The press corps has agreed that we must never ask such questions, but the (colloquial) madness of this president's conduct has never seemed much more apparent than it did yesterday.

McFaul was reacting to the idea that Greenland might be taken by force. Yesterday, the president's spokesperson explicitly said that this "craziest idea [McFaul] ever heard of" does remain fully viable.

That's what McFaul was talking about. But an array of extremely unusual conduct had been unloosed by the end of the day on behalf of the sitting president.

Below, we'll cite what Stephen Miller said about the right to take Greenland by force—but Greenland was only one part of yesterday's stew. 

There was also the (colloquially) crazy new White House website. It triggered a front-page report in the extremely cautious New York Times, while triggering this array of reports at the more plain-spoken Mediaite:

Trump White House Launches Stunning January 6 Website Trashing ‘Violent’ Capitol Police

The 5 Most Unhinged Claims Made on Trump’s Jaw-Dropping New January 6 Website

‘Orwellian Doublespeak on Steroids’: Trump WH’s Jan. 6 Propaganda Website Sparks Outrage

Opinion: Trump White House Publishes Government-Sanctioned Lies About January 6

According to that opinion piece by Colby Hall, "The Trump White House has published a government-sanctioned series of bonkers lies about the January 6 attack..."

Speaking colloquially, that new web site about January 6 is crazy all the way down. Then too, you had this strange belated disclosure about the Epstein files:

DOJ Admits It’s Still Reviewing ‘More Than 2 Million Documents’ in Epstein Files—‘Less Than 1 Percent’ Have Been Released

Say what? Two weeks after a deadline passed, the DOJ decided to report that less than one percent of the Epstein documents have been released to date?

To our ear, that constitutes an admission that the DOJ never had any intention of complying with the congressional mandate in question. There too, the Trump administration seemed to be saying "good-bye to all that" with respect to the traditional norms and procedures of the American government.

That new website is patently crazy. As a colloquial matter, it's crazy all the way down.

Beyond that, the threat to Greenland was insane, or so McFaul heatedly said. And as military threats aimed at other countries continued to fly around, the sitting president now told the world about the personal tribute he'd be receiving from the conquered Venezuelan regime.

Mediaite reports:

Trump Says He’s Selling Venezuela’s Oil and That the ‘Money Will Be Controlled by Me’

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he would be selling Venezuela’s oil after invading the country, with the money to be personally controlled by him. 

“I am pleased to announce that the Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America,” announced Trump in a Truth Social post. “This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!”

He concluded, “I have asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan, immediately. It will be taken by storage ships, and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

So the potentate said on his Truth Social site. Barrels of oil would be coming to him, and he'd be controlling the loot.

That new website about January is utterly stone-cold nuts. Meanwhile, the president was presenting himself as an ancient conqueror receiving a very large tribute.

Meanwhile, on what basis might we decide to take Greenland by force? In a New York Times news report, Stephen Miller explained:

Stephen Miller Asserts U.S. Has Right to Take Greenland

Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump, asserted on Monday that Greenland rightfully belonged to the United States and that the Trump administration could seize the semiautonomous Danish territory if it wanted.

“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Mr. Miller told Jake Tapper, the CNN host, after being asked repeatedly whether he would rule out using military force.

The remarks were part of a vocal push by Mr. Miller, long a powerful behind-the-scenes player in Trump administration policy, to justify American imperialism and a vision for a new world order in which the United States could freely overthrow national governments and take foreign territory and resources so long as it was in the national interest.

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

And so on from there. According to Miller, there would no longer by any pretense of protecting the weaker from the stronger.  Even as the Trump White House presented crazy claims about January 6, it was returning to the iron laws which have ruled the world since the beginning of time.

Plainly, we're no longer in Kansas! But have we possibly entered a realm driven by "mental illness?"

As the nation enters uncharted waters, that basic question will never be asked. That said, the sitting president's strange behavior has been sitting right there, in plain sight, all along.

The behavior has been extremely strange—and the strangeness has never been disguised. Our question moving forward will be this:

Has any major Blue American org ever come to terms with that obvious fact—with that undisguised state of affairs?

Tomorrow: Bill Clinton went to the island dozens of times, the disordered man repeatedly said