'Deeply unwell' Trump is being given a total pass for nonstop mental lapses: analysis

Reflecting back on Donald Trump's rally speech in Las Vegas last weekend, former Naval College professor and current political analyst Tom Nichols wrote that there needs to be a serious discussion about the former president's mental faculties following his "bizarre digression" about electrocuting sharks.

In his column for The Atlantic, Nichols got right to the point by noting that the former president has managed to convince "millions of people—and the American media—to treat his lapses into fantasies and gibberish as a normal, meaningful form of oratory."

Case in point, Trump telling the crowd in Las Vegas as they stood in the sweltering heat, "So I said, ‘So there’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here. Do I get electrocuted? If the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted? Or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer. He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.’ I said, ‘I think it’s a good question. I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water.’ But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark.”'

As Nichols dryly noted, that is not normal political discourse.

While admitting that it sounds "funny" in retrospect, he then added, "until we remember that this man wants to return to a position where he would hold America’s secrets, be responsible for the execution of our laws, and preside as the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world."

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Pointing out that idea should "terrify" any voter, he took the press to task for making it a story for a day or two and then moving on because the former president is in obvious decline and is therefore "unfit" to be president.

"Nor was the Vegas monologue the first time: Trump for years has fallen off one verbal cliff after another, with barely a ripple in the national consciousness. I am not a psychiatrist, and I am not diagnosing Trump with anything. I am, however, a man who has lived on this Earth for more than 60 years, and I know someone who has serious emotional problems when I see them played out in front of me, over and over," he wrote before adding, "The 45th president is a disturbed person."

Adding, "Donald Trump is unstable," he continued, "Some of these problems were evident when he first ran, and we now know from revelations by many of his former staff that his problems processing information and staying tethered to reality are not part of some hammy act."

Warning that a second Trump presidency will not be populated with advisers who will counsel him from going off the rails, he cautioned, "The 45th president is deeply unwell. It is long past time for Americans, including those in public life, to recognize his inability to serve as the 47th."

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