ILLNESS: It will only get worse, observers had said!

MONDAY, APRIL 6, 2026

Stone Age, here we come: Is this what we've been worried about in months and years of reports at this site? 

We refer to one part of what the president's niece recently said. We're forced to show you again:

ERIN 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.  

What is the phrase to which we refer? Fellow citizens, gaze on our works and despair:

...which are only going to worsen 

The current, highly unusual situation is only going to get worse!

The fact that she said it doesn't mean that it's true. But when Bandy X. Lee, the Yale psychiatrist, edited a best-selling book all the way back in 2017, the medical specialists whose work she presented frequently said the same thing.  

For better or worse, those medical specialists have been banned from the public discourse. They've been banned in accord with a long-standing rule of the journalistic guild, according to which issues of mental health, but especially of mental illness, must never be included in any discussion of major political figures.

That was always a very good rule, until such time as it possibly wasn't. Along the way, it was sometimes honored in the breech. 

But even now, in the case of the sitting president, our sharpest global observers fall back on language like this: 

From Fareed Zakaria GPS, CNN

BEDDOES (4/5/26): I mean, the first thing to say is I was shocked hearing you read that [Truth Social] post as I was reading it myself. And it is—I mean, and I use this word advisedly, it sounds unhinged. That that is the President of the United States is just profoundly shocking. And I think we've all become somewhat inured to statements by the president of the United States.

But even by his standards, that was very shocking. And I wasn't surprised when I looked on my phone just a few minutes ago to find several people asking whether this was actually real.  

The speaker was Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist. She's one of the sharpest observers of the war in Iran available to cable news viewers. 

But even yesterday, she fell back on the established weasel word for what seems perhaps to be happening right before our eyes. We single her out because she's so well-informed and so mentally sharp. 

The weasel word is this:  

Unhinged   

Unhinged! It's a way to keep your commentary in the safe zone, even as observers ask if this latest Truth Social post could possibly be real.  

We don't say this to criticize Beddoes. This is uniform press corps practice and, for better or worse, it isn't going to stop. 

(Beddoes was engaged in a conversation about Iran with Zakaria and Richard Haass. Neither of those highly qualified observers took things beyond that one word.)

Beddoes was referring to the now-famous Truth Social post the president offered yesterday morning, as Easter Sunday dawned. It extended a worrisome series of statements over the preceding five days, starting with something he said in his televised address last Wednesday night:   

Televised address, Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Thanks to the progress we’ve made, I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly. 

We’re going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.

In a wandering, self-contradictory speech, that reference to "bringing them back to the Stone Ages" was the start of a series of worrisome statements—statements so strange that major observers were falling back on "unhinged." As of yesterday morning, the president's latest Truth Social post was so strange that we saw several major observers seek safety in that dodge.   

This afternoon, we'll post the text of the president's unhinged statements, from the Stone Ages comment on. We want to create an historical record, presenting the text of these statements exactly as they were made.  

Speaking with Erin Burnett, the president's niece, a clinical therapist, described her uncle as someone "who for decades now has had serious, undiagnosed and untreated psychiatric disorders."   

She said those disorders are going to worsen. She was speaking of something called "mental illness," but here's a very important question:

What kind of "illness" is that?