Clip of Trump's blunder-filled summit unsettles MS NOW: 'Something deeply wrong with him'

MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace opened her show Wednesday by rattling off what President Donald Trump had just told the world — the Iran ceasefire is over, all trade with Spain is cut off, and, in her recounting, "Japan is now apparently an Islamic republic."

She was reacting to Trump's rounds of news conferences at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, where the president mixed up Iran and Japan, claiming "111 missiles" had been fired at a U.S. aircraft carrier by the "Islamic Republic of Japan." Moments earlier, seated beside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump had gestured to him and asked reporters if they had a question for "President Putin." He also called TikTok "tic tac," branded Iran's leaders "scum," and declared the ceasefire over.

Wallace was briefly left speechless as she played the clip, then unloaded with a withering verdict dripping in sarcasm.

"Marco Rubio is going to have to start standing next to him and translating. But unsurprisingly, Donald Trump's incomprehensible, unhinged, embarrassing, uninformed, me, me, me display there in his approach to geopolitics has had an effect. It appears to have finally exasperated and exhausted European leaders' patience," she said.

Her guests went further.

Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said such moments would once have been treated as international crises but now draw a shrug. Atlantic staff writer Tom Nichols, a professor emeritus at the Naval War College, offered the bleakest read.

"It's almost like we have a relative in the room, and there's something deeply wrong with him, and we've all agreed to not talk about it," Nichols said. "But there is something deeply wrong with him. His friends know it. His critics know it. His staff, I'm sure, knows it. The world knows it. World leaders know it. And most importantly, our enemies know it, which is why they don't take him seriously."

Nichols argued the real danger wasn't the viral gaffes, but that Trump made claims about an active war no one could parse. Wallace tied it to a broader shift, citing New York Times reporting that European leaders have decided to stop humoring the president and push back.