Rick Wilson: Trump's press conference meltdown was a 'manic ragefest by America’s Worst President'

According to conservative campaign consultant Rick Wilson, Donald Trump's nearly two and half hour press conference on Monday, ostensibly about the coronavirus pandemic that has now claimed over the lives of over 23,000 Americans, was nothing less than rantings of a "failed man" lashing out at his perceived enemies.

Writing for the Daily Beast in his typically colorful, but direct, way, Wilson got right to the point by starting: "If you watched President Donald Trump’s daily press briefing Monday, you know that even by his abysmal standards this was the loudest siren yet, a warning that the man occupying the Oval Office is more suited to a very long, involuntary stay in an inpatient mental-health facility than the presidency of the United States."

Calling the president an "angry, needy man not looking outward to the needs of a nation in crisis," the conservative strategist said Trump's performance on Monday where he viciously attacked reporters and claimed he had "total authority" over the U.S. left no doubt that he is a now completely out of control.

Pointing out that the press conference was a "meltdown sh*tshow on the top of the dumpster fire at the peak of Burning-Tire Mountain," Wilson wrote of the president, "It was a manic, gibbering, squint-eyed ragefest by America’s Worst President, a petty display by a failed man who long ago passed the limits of his competence and knowledge. It left little to cling to for even his most fervent lackeys but the grunting media animus that replaced conservatism as the motivating force of the Republican Party."

"Trump just gave the nation a performance that was so manic, so furious, and so utterly unhinged that anyone watching it walked away thinking the 25th Amendment has been too long unexercised and the proof is behind the podium every damn day," he wrote. "What you saw was the real Trump, unbound by facts, reason, logic, the law, or the Constitution, a petty bitch picking petty fights with reporters, a bard of his own songs of grievance and anger."

According to Wilson, what was particularly notable about the president's rant was his claim of "total authority." 

"This is of course par for the course of what Trump really is. I’ve said it from the start. He’s not a conservative, he’s a narcissistic authoritarian statist, and Monday was a big fat QED for even the slow children in the class. Nothing about this man was ever conservative," he wrote. " What Trump described Monday was a lot closer to monarchy than a representative democracy. We know this about the man: He fetishizes royalty, strongmen, dictators, kings, warlords, and others who don’t have to work within the bounds of a representative democracy or a republican form of government bound by a constitution and laws."

"Burn this truth into your mind: The best-case scenario from Monday’s press conference is that Trump is out of his damn mind, wrong on the law, wrong on the Constitution, and wrong on the intent of the Founders as to the power of the chief executive. The best case will mean his insistence that he can 'reopen the economy' will be smothered by one crisis after the next, a victim of the pace of events and a staff that realizes he’s crazier than a sh*thouse rat," he added before issuing a chilling warning.

"It’s a common trope among conservatives to talk about the intent of the Founders. Monday should be a reminder that those Founders approached executive power with enormous caution and were diligent in the creation of a constitutional system in which no branch held 'absolute authority,'" he wrote. "When authority is total, so too is the madness of the man who declares it, and the potential for abuse of power."

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