President Donald Trump's "erratic behavior" is spiraling out of control along with the war in Iran, according to a longtime close-up observer.
Author Michael Wolff, who's written four books about the 79-year-old president, told The Daily Beast's "Inside Trump's Head" podcast that Trump's foul-mouthed outbursts, threats to annihilate Iran's "whole civilization," insults against the pope and frequent mental lapses show that he's “more and more distinct from, cut-off from, separate from reality.”
“We have seen 10 years of erratic behavior, but I think it is coming faster and more furious in these past number of weeks, probably prompted by the war, which is going terribly, of course, and he doesn’t know what to do, and he doesn’t know how to get out of it,” Wolff said.
Trump's popularity has collapsed across the coalition that re-elected him to a second term in 2024, and he's finding that his usual blustering tactics are useless against Iran, which is holding the global economy hostage by shutting down the crucial Strait of Hormuz.
“But also, I think, prompted by a whole set of other things — Minneapolis, ICE, the failing economy, the dimwits that surround him, which he has now been forced to fire," Wolff said. "So I think he is in a corner, and that has meant he’s flailing out erratically.”
“There is every reason to believe," he added, "and for every reasonable person to believe, that something is seriously off here and dangerous.”
Wolff was granted access to the White House during Trump's first term, but he said even from the outside he could see that the president was in a cognitive tailspin that his top officials and aides were incapable of buffering.
“If you stop seeing it as a reasonable enterprise — that is a civil emergency,” he said.