In a column late Thursday, former President Joe Biden administration senior adviser turned MS NOW host Symone Sanders, pointed out that the constant drumbeat about Donald Trump’s mental competence during his second term is creating a new dilemma for Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators.
As she pointed out, the president this term has been even more in the public eye, with almost daily press availabilities from the Oval Office, as well as spasms of Truth Social postings that have ramped up threats against his enemies, including a growing tendency towards using obscenities.
"In his second term, especially over the past few weeks, Trump has seemed more erratic than ever, making bizarre claims and accusations about the Iran war on social media and ratcheting up his already inflammatory rhetoric," Sanders wrote. "Americans are noticing. Only about one-fourth of Americans said Trump was even-tempered in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll."
With that in mind, she noted that it was easier in calmer times for conservatives to wave away the president’s comments as hyperbole, or to use what has become known as “sanewashing,” where a Trump defender explained and justified what the president meant, putting the onus on the critic for their purported lack of comprehension.
According to Sanders, the art of “sanewashing” has become a non-starter now that Trump’s pronouncements have included threatening to wipe out civilizations and out-of-the-blue comments like “Praise be to Allah.”
She wrote, “Trump has always been erratic. But what’s changed is the system around him,” adding, that previously, “meandering speech at a political rally becomes ‘unconventional,’ while unhinged threats at his perceived enemies become ‘hard-line negotiating tactics.’”
“Privately, even some Republicans will acknowledge that the president’s behavior is not right. But publicly, they either deny having seen it or explain it away, granting him a benefit of the doubt that stretches further and further,” she explained. “But the behavior has become too blatant to ignore.
"The gap between the image that Republicans present of their leader and what the public can see for itself has grown too big. And once that trust collapses, voters start to wonder about everything else they’ve been told," Sanders wrote.
”It’s a serious concern about whether the person at the center of American power is exercising it with consistency and discipline,” she asserted. “So if what we are seeing is a president who has lost a step, whose erratic behavior is worsening, whose judgment appears inconsistent, then the question is unavoidable. Is he making these decisions himself? Is he fully aware of the consequences? Or is someone else stepping in, shaping outcomes and exercising power in his place? Either way, the American people deserve an answer.”