Trump is ‘unfit and deeply disturbed’: Conservative columnist questions the president’s mental state

The question of President Donald Trump's mental fitness for office was raised by a conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin on Tuesday.

"On the eve of his impeachment, a stain that obviously torments him more than his enablers have let on, President Trump issued a rambling, unhinged and lie-filled letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). It is difficult to capture how bizarre and frightening the letter is simply by counting the utter falsehoods (e.g., repeating the debunked accusation that Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was fired for investigating Burisma; claiming Congress is obstructing justice; arguing he was afforded no rights in the process), or by quoting from the invective dripping from his pen," Rubin wrote.

"What is most striking is the spectacle of the letter itself — a president so unhinged as to issue such an harangue; a White House entirely unable to stop him; a party so subservient to him that it would not trigger a search for a new nominee; a right-wing media bubble that will herald Trump for being Trump and excoriate Democrats for driving the president to this point; and a mainstream media not quite able to address a public temper-tantrum (resorting instead to euphemisms such as 'scorching,' 'searing,' etc.)" Rubin explained. "The letter and the response (or lack thereof) is the perfect encapsulation of the state of American politics — in which one major party has bound itself to the mast of a raging, dangerous narcissist while the other cannot uphold the norms and institutions on which our democracy depends."

Her column was headlined, "It is hard to capture how bizarre and frightening Trump’s letter to Pelosi is," but Rubin offered an alternative version on Twitter.

"To say the process is 'partisan,' or that the two sides are 'unable to agree,' misleads average Americans who think there is some shared responsibility for the result of one party’s willingness to subvert the truth and the Constitution. Trump brought impeachment on himself and has become, like his Fox News information source, untethered to reality. Republicans are refusing to live up to their oaths," she explained. "That is the reality; the solution comes in 2020."

Rubin noted the wide gender gap on whether Trump is mentally unfit for the Oval Office.

"I take some solace in noting that female voters — who disfavor Trump’s performance and would vote against him by nearly 30 percentage points according to some polls — recoil from such outbursts. Many are rightly concerned by the damage an unfit and deeply disturbed president might bring. Perhaps the experience of having abusive spouses or angry male bosses makes women particularly sensitive to fits of fury and evidence of irrationality. If only male voters were as concerned, and as unwilling to see Trump as some sort of champion of the downtrodden white male in America, we could be assured of his defeat in 2020. Maybe the president’s meltdown (and we suppose it will get worse with time) will help open their eyes," Rubin wrote.