President Trump embarrassed the U.S. on the world stage with a “self-obsessed and deeply weird” performance during his trip to Scotland, a columnist opined.
And, wrote USA Today’s Rex Huppke, it showed international leaders that America was being led by a man “in obvious mental decline.”
“Over the span of a weekend, the U.S. president’s addled brain raced about like a dull-witted Labrador attempting to outsmart squirrels,” wrote Huppke.
“He went on lengthy diatribes about windmills. He ranted about the ungratefulness of starving children. He forayed into nonsensical conspiracy theories regarding the Jeffrey Epstein scandal consuming his administration, while laughably saying upon arriving in Scotland on July 25: 'I’m not focused on conspiracy theories.'”
The trip, which involved meetings with leaders including the president of the European Commission and the prime minister of the United Kingdom, was widely seen as tax-payer funded promotion of Trump’s golf courses.
“News coverage tends to trim Trump’s voluminous prattling into digestible sound bites that sound vaguely sane,” Huppke wrote.
“But if we care about a president’s lack of mental acuity – and I’ve been told by many that we do – it’s worth sticking your head in the high-pressure stream of nonsense that shoots out every time Trump opens his face.”
Huppke listed several examples, describing Trump raging against immigration into the UK before segueing into an attack on windmills.
He veered into starvation in Gaza, and complained that nobody was grateful for aid the U.S. had sent. “It would be nice to have at least a thank you.,” he said.
And then he went into the Jeffrey Epstein saga.
“Trump’s mental dullness led him to keep talking about the Epstein scandal he wants everyone to stop talking about, effectively telling the world the Epstein stuff is “not a big thing,” but probably involves former Democratic President Bill Clinton and a former president of Harvard University and “hedge fund guys” and was probably made up by Democrats who probably put fake stuff in the Epstein files but then, I guess, didn’t use any damning information against Trump before the election," Huppke wrote.
“He also gave a third explanation for why he stopped being friends with Epstein and said of the convicted sex offender’s notorious island: “I never had the privilege of going to his island.”
“The privilege? Spoken like a man whose mind has turned to mush.
“So nice of Trump to share his cognitive decline with the world.”