Panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" debated whether Donald Trump's mental fitness should be more of a campaign issue.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski started off Friday morning's episode with a profane takedown of the former president's rambling haranguing in Detroit, and she convened a panel later on to discuss whether Trump is showing signs of age-related mental illness.
"I want to point out, it never was a huge story that Donald Trump promised a day of violence to solve crime," Brzezinski said. "What is that? What are you talking about? A day of violence. Are people going to run around shooting people in the country? I'm actually serious. Take a look at what has already happened in a Trump administration, even if it was on the end of it, where he had people being beaten in [Lafayette] Park. There was Jan. 6. This was when there was a modicum of restraints. He is going to hire who he wants to hire. You can bring up Project 25 and have people knock it down, saying Trump has nothing to do with it. He does. You can also listen to what he says. A day of violence? I'm scared."
The Atlantic's Mark Leibovich argued that Trump had so thoroughly "flooded the zone" with outrageous statements that few of them resonated as fully as they might coming from another candidate.
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"The idea of going into Detroit, where you're supposedly campaigning, and trashing the place is, I mean, perverse on its head, but as [Rev. Al Sharpton] said, there is something going on," Leibovich said. "He is appealing to suburban white voters who probably live nowhere near Detroit but are close enough to be in the range of the media market. Look, that is right out of his playbook, which is really weird. He's done this before; he's done it in Michigan. What did he call, like, New Hampshire 'a drug-infested den' early in his presidency? You know, this was a very close state at that point. I think it just had gone for [Hillary] Clinton by a few points. This is what he does and gets away with it. In a weird way, it is counterintuitive, but I think his supporters like it. It reflects their grievance to the world immediately around them they feel hasn't rewarded them."
Brzezinski pointed out that experts have raised the question of his mental fitness going back to the early days of his first administration.
"There have been a number of licensed, respected psychiatrists who have come out, even though it is sort of against regulation, against their code, to diagnose from watching someone on television, but they are so disturbed by the constant behavior that they have seen over the course of the last four, eight, 12 years," she said. "Even if you do a deep dive into the study of his life, they are convinced that he is deeply ill."
Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, agreed, and said they had reason to be alarmed by Trump's behavior.
"The media needs to pay more attention to it," Tomasky said. "You pay attention to it, you guys pay attention to it on this show. Susan [Glasser]'s husband, Peter Baker, co-wrote a very good piece in the New York Times on Sunday, which I also wrote about it, but this needs to be a theme in media coverage. Frankly, maybe Democrats need to talk about this more and more openly, a guy who talks like that. You know, he comes up with a name for it, the weave, to make it seem like it's planted. He just says whatever sprouts out of his head. You know, there is a real question as to whether that guy can be the president of the United States, you know, next year or certainly four years from now."