Trump’s toxic, racist video surpasses previous levels of debasement | Donald Trump
The claim that Donald Trump’s trenchant contribution to political discourse has essentially bankrupted the English language’s capacity for outrage is a singular, if highly dubious, distinction.
Since Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower in 2015 to announce his presidential candidacy, there has been an avalanche of incessant and extreme insults and desensitization of even his most ardent critics, leading to a level of shock fatigue.
But Trump’s extremely racist and offensive late-night Truth Social post Depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys He has broken through the barrier of numbness to register on the political Richter scale at a level few of his many previous insults have achieved.
That Trump had managed to surpass his previous low levels of standards was only underlined by his decision to delete the post, which came under fire, just hours after the White House had initially defended it.
This rare escalation and attempts to pin blame on an unnamed White House official are unlikely to prevent this episode from shining a light on an issue that much of the media seems reluctant to confront head-on; Trump’s online and public behavior is becoming increasingly reckless and raises serious questions about his mental acuity and fitness for duty.
Whispers on social media that Trump is showing signs of cognitive decline have increased in recent weeks.
Such chatter has been fueled, rather than silenced, by the president’s frequent use of multiple cognitive examinations that he claims have “succeeded”; These boasts only triggered questions about why he was undergoing such tests.
Even if the racist toxicity of Obama’s video wasn’t enough, the nightly surge of social media posts from a president who often appears out of control and crazy has also created more excitement.
On several nights over the past two months, Trump fired off numerous late-night social media posts, including scathing attacks on his rivals. One night in December, Kicked out more than 150 posts in a few hours.
The president has also been observed falling asleep during cabinet meetings and other public forums.
Against this backdrop, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s initial rebuke on Friday to reporters to “stop the fake outrage and cover something that really matters to the American people today” missed the point by a wide margin; Later feedback confirmed this.
As polls show growing disapproval of the Trump administration’s performance on affordability issues and the violent actions of ICE agents in Minneapolis and elsewhere, critics may feel entitled to respond that such advice might have been better given to Trump.
More sensitive, and more ominous for Trump, was this: Response from South Carolina Republican senator Tim ScottHe is black and generally one of the president’s most reliable allies. Describing the post as “the most racist thing I’ve ever seen in the White House,” Scott wrote: “The President should take this down.”
Given Trump’s well-known trait of doubling up (a lesson learned from his boxing mentor Roy Cohn), the fact that he has done just that represents an unexpected show of weakness, if not exactly contrition.
But this is unlikely to be a template for future behavior patterns.
More likely, there are other indiscretions that could lead to increased calls. 25th amendmentA constitutional provision that includes provisions for the removal of a president if it is determined that he is unable to perform his duties.
Indeed, given the United States’ painful history of racism and the human costs incurred in trying to overcome them, Obama’s post may have already crossed that threshold.
Enforcement of the 4th Amendment (needed to remove a president) would be complex and appears to be a very unlikely prospect.
Vice President J.D. Vance and a majority of the cabinet would need to declare Trump unfit; a scenario that is difficult to imagine given the subservient displays of loyalty the president demands from his cabinet members. Even if that hurdle were to be overcome, the support of two-thirds of both houses of Congress would be required if Trump objects to the effort to impeach him; which seems likely.
And for Democrats, comparisons to Joe Biden could be jarring.
Speculation about Biden’s alleged cognitive decline increased in the final year of his presidency, but evidence was limited as White House officials tried to cocoon him and restrict his public appearances.
But after the president’s disastrous televised debate with Trump in Atlanta in June 2024, when Trump appeared lost and unable to complete persuasive thoughts, doubts about his ability to serve another four years as president reached a boiling point, ultimately forcing him to withdraw his candidacy in favor of Kamala Harris.
But Biden never issued racist or derogatory social media posts or appeared to threaten NATO allies as Trump did regarding Greenland. He also did not demonize entire ethnic groups, as Trump has repeatedly done by calling Minnesota’s Somali community “garbage.”
He did not openly attack female journalists in press briefings with spiteful and misogynistic tones, as Trump has done several times recently.
Racially abusing his Democratic predecessor at Truth Social may be an insufficient catalyst to prompt Republicans to immediately consider impeaching a president to whom they have stepped back to acquiesce and accommodate.
But some may be starting to wonder how much longer they can trust what Lyndon Johnson calls the “magnificent duties” of being president in a man who spends his twilight hours sharing memes that threaten to reopen the wounds the country has spent generations on and the many treasures it has sought to heal.
