The Insanity Defence
Given Trump’s ego, combined with his laziness and lack of interest in learning the responsibilities of a POTUS, no doubt the Republican PTB saw him as a useful idiot who, once in office, would simply allow them to run the government without his input or interference. I’m sure they figured that he would be content to sign-off on whatever the GOP came up, would deliver whatever speeches were written for him, and would be satisfied with the title of “president” and the deference he would be paid as the holder of that office.
Of course, as things have played out, the Republicans didn’t get what they’d expected. Instead, Trump took not the job, but himself, seriously. Rather than being merely a figurehead doing as he was told, he started dictating to the very people that had assumed he would be content with playing golf and only showing up for ceremonial duties when necessary.
The GOP, known for their ability to play offence, suddenly found themselves playing defence. Every day, without respite, they have been forced to defend Trump’s inane tweets, ludicrous “policies”, obvious lies, and statements that have made him – and, by extension, the Republican party – look ridiculous in the eyes of voters, as well as the world at large.
Make no mistake. While the small minority of die-hard Trump supporters might be happy with his performance in office, the powers-that-be in the GOP recognize the damage he’s doing to the party “brand”. They see Trump’s approval numbers dropping, they see the headlines, they read the polls. They know Mueller’s investigation is leading up to disclosures that will be devastating to this administration – and even if Trump himself cannot be directly implicated in wrongdoing (as unlikely as that may be), his presidency will be too tainted to successfully survive and proceed unscathed.
Make no mistake. The Republican PTB want Trump gone – the problem being how to remove him without being blamed for electing him in the first place.
That brings us to the current state of affairs.
Over the past week, rumours have been conveniently leaked about WH insiders questioning Trump’s mental state. I believe this is the first foray into easing the country into the GOP’s only line of defence for having supported Trump in the first instance: ”Don’t blame us. We had no idea he was mentally unstable when we elected him.”
I expect that the upcoming Republican memes will be that Trump entered office as a sane, well-grounded pOTUS, whose mental stability sadly deteriorated as a result of the pressures he was under due to his vast responsibilities. We will hear about how he was potentially a great president, who unfortunately fell victim to a mental illness that caused him to say and do things contrary to GOP’s principles.
In the days to come, we will hear about how Trump’s racism, bigotry, misogyny, et cetera, were merely symptoms of his mental illness, and how the Republican party was innocently unaware that the man they’d elected would say and do the things he has said and done.
At this point, it is the GOP’s only out – portraying their lying, irrational, paranoid Idiot-in-Chief as the sad victim of his own deteriorating mental state, and themselves as the party who backed a man who was totally competent at the time they gave him their support, completely unaware of his precarious mental stability.
Needless to say, we Democrats know the truth. Trump gave every indication of being a clueless idiot while the Republicans were touting him as the intelligent, savvy businessman who would deliver the nation from imminent ruin. We know that his stupidity, bigotry, racism and misogyny is who he is and has always been, and are not the result of the sudden onset of an unforeseeable mental condition that only manifested itself after he was in office.
But watch for it. The country is about to be eased, slowly but surely, into being led to believe by the GOP that every incoherent tweet, every misstep, every outrageous lie Trump has told while in office is attributable to his heretofore unrecognized mental illness.
The Republicans’ ONLY chance of survival as a party is to distance themselves from the incredibly unpopular policies of their “pResident” by claiming they were somehow unaware that those policies were the result of a deteriorating mental capacity.
The truth is they knew all along who Trump was. They just thought they could control him to their advantage.
Pleading insanity – his, not theirs – is the only option left for the party that knowingly elected the worst president ever.
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