Former U.S. Naval War College professor Tom Nichols penned a column for The Atlantic after President Donald Trump's speech to top military leaders, noting that it's clear he is "not okay."
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace pointed to Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA), who made the same comment to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) that "the president is not well." The exchange was captured on video ahead of Dean's conversation with Wallace on Tuesday, and Johnson replied that he didn't watch Trump's speech.
Nichols, in his piece, talked about Trump's speech, but he also recalled a question asked by a U.S. Air Force nuclear-missile officer in 1973: "How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?" The officer lost his career as a result.
Now that concerns about the president's mental capacity are resurfacing, the question has again been raised.
Nichols told Wallace that he was watching the speech in real-time and observing the audience's responses. Some of those top leaders were once Nichols' own students, he noted. And he was curious about what they were thinking, since they aren't typically those in the crowd at a MAGA rally.
He said that he heard from some of the people in the room that Trump doesn't seem all right.
"I'm not a doctor. I'm not making a diagnosis. I'm saying as a lay person and a man of advancing years myself, that I looked at the president and I thought, he's not okay. And it's not just his physical demeanor. I think for too long we have been willing to talk about the weird, rambling, you know, what the president tries to call 'the weave.' It's not 'the weave.' It is some kind of emotional disorder, condition, where he just can't hold a thought in his head. And I think when you're speaking to 800 admirals and generals, that audience is going to notice it a lot more than a MAGA audience is at rallies because they're either looking at their phone or laughing or not really paying attention."
Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling agreed with Nichols, saying that he heard from former colleagues on Tuesday evening who said some of the same things.
"It seemed to be disconnected thoughts," said Hertling. "And I would agree with Tom, when you know you're going into an audience of that kind of folk, the people who are the generals and admirals and senior enlisted officers, you know you've got to be on your game."
He went on to say that one of the top military people he knows typically takes a lot of notes, and halfway through the speech, he quit writing, knowing that nothing that was being said could be taken back to his troops.
