There are so many things that President Trump does on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis to demonstrate his unfitness for office that the country’s head is spinning. His latest fiasco led many — including his former friend and communications director Anthony Scaramucci — to suggest he might be mentally unwell.
I am speaking about the moment Trump stood in the Oval Office and showed a clearly doctored version of Hurricane Dorian’s track on which a Sharpie-drawn expanded circle included Alabama in the possible path of the storm. When asked who drew the black mark that was clearly not part of the official map, Trump said, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” We have since learned, according to a close adviser, that it was Trump himself who drew it.
The problem with that map is that it was never the official prediction or estimate of where Hurricane Dorian would head. Trump felt obliged to go on national television to double and triple down on a tweet he had posted earlier, proclaiming Alabama was possibly in the path of Dorian and causing panic in a state that was never in real danger.
Trump’s tweet was so egregiously false that the National Weather Service felt obligated to tweet out a correction immediately afterward, stating that Alabama was not in the hurricane’s path and no one in that state had anything to fear from the storm.
Yes, mistakes can happen.
Yes, Trump is only human — though don’t tell him that.
But a sane human would acknowledge his mistake and apologize.
The difference between Donald Trump and someone who is sound of mind, who understands the heavy burden of the presidency, who takes seriously his role as commander in chief, who comprehends what a powerful bully pulpit he has, who recognizes that his every word can have profound consequences, is that Donald J. Trump acts contrary to every measure a rational person would take.
While the president has lied more than 12,000 times since taking office (and every time he does so, he denigrates the presidency, the country and the American people), this time it seems different.
To have tweeted a dire warning about Hurricane Dorian for the residents of Alabama, without expert proof or evidence they would be in danger, is incredibly disturbing.
Worse, however, is that instead of just saying he got it wrong and was sorry to have panicked a whole state with one tweet, Trump made up a map, pretending it came from the National Weather Service, on which he drew a half-circle with a black Sharpie to extend the area the hurricane would hit to falsely include Alabama — all so that it would make it appear he was right about his original tweet.
What the president and his staff did proves that the emperor has no clothes and that everyone around him is stripped down as well. And it is downright illegal to publicly pronounce a weather prediction from an official capacity that is known to be false.
Seriously, America, why are we pretending there’s not something wrong with the occupant of the Oval Office as well as the people who support his bizarre, erratic or unfit behavior each day? It goes beyond just supporting your boss, beyond having blinders on or selling your political soul to work for the president.
Trump’s deputy press secretary, Hogan Gidley, tweeted, “Absolutely right @realDonaldTrump! Watching the media go ballistic over a black sharpie mark on a map would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. The real news that matters here is a deadly hurricane continues up the coast and tens millions of Americans could be greatly impacted.”
His tweet made it seem like the media was making too much of a little black mark on a map and not covering the news of the hurricane. Well, the media was right to cover something from the White House that caused panic in Alabama — and doing so did not in any way keep the media from also continuously covering the dangers of Hurricane Dorian and the correct direction it has been following and warning all who live in its deadly path.
Scaramucci, once one of the president’s closest advisers, friends and allies, has come out to say that he does not think the president is mentally well and, further, that his staff is covering up Trump’s mental decline.
The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser analyzes Trump’s wackier-than-ever August, and this was even before Sharpiegate, and she concludes that the president’s actions are causing many to think he is descending into even less presidential behavior and what that might mean.
I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. But I have eyes, ears, common sense, decency and sound judgment. And so do most Americans — which is why more and more of them conclude, with each passing day, that Donald Trump is not fit to be their president.
America, enough is enough.
Maria Cardona is a principal at the Dewey Square Group, a Democratic strategist and a CNN/CNN Español political commentator. Follow her on Twitter @MariaTCardona.