I think there are two conversations about Donald Trump’s fitness that are happening in tandem, but are not connecting, as they should.
One of them is a belief in some quarters that the former president is a fascist. This is the older of the two. It started after he was elected in 2016. It has grown in intensity, crescendoing over the weekend when he called on using the U.S. military against his critics who are American citizens.
“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” Trump said in a Fox News interview. “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric is getting darker and more aggressive, according to Politico’s survey of 20 of his most recent campaign rallies.
The other conversation is younger, but growing fast. That one surrounds concerns that Trump may be facing a deteriorating mental state. It seemed to snap into focus Monday when Trump “swayed and bopped” on stage to music for 39 minutes in a “bizarre town hall episode,” according to the Washington Post.
His unsettled state also surfaced during an interview with the top editor of Bloomberg News. “By any objective standard,” claimed writer Aaron Rupar, it “was a disaster.” Rupar went on to say that his campaign now “undoubtedly realizes his rapidly degrading condition doesn’t play well with audiences beyond the MAGA cult.” Trump's team then decided to cancel appearances with mainstream media outlets and return to the safer territory of his own rallies and Fox News.
Was it a disaster? Bloomberg's writeup was more neutral, highlighting his plans to "overhaul the US economy through dramatic tariff increases and more direct consultation with the Federal Reserve." Trump said "his policies would result in substantial growth despite projections that his agenda would fuel inflation and spike the national debt," though Bloomberg questioned the impact on small businesses.
“It’s going to have a massive effect, positive effect,” Trump remarked.
Conversations about fascism and Trump's state of mind feel like they’re running on parallel tracks. Some say he’s unfit because he’s a fascist. Others say he’s unfit because he appears to be losing focus. But if we’re going to “try to get to the bottom of who he is,” as veteran Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said this morning, we ought to see these conversations as mutually reinforcing, not mutually exclusive. They are not two but one.
The question of which came first, Trump’s seeming fascism or his changed mental state, was apparently on the mind of Mark Milley. During the Trump Administration, he was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation’s highest-ranking military man.
In an interview with Bob Woodward, Milley said Trump is “a fascist to the core,” and called Trump “the most dangerous person to this country.”
Milley’s thinking about Trump's nature has evolved since talking to Woodward for his 2021 book, Peril. That book explored Trump’s leadership in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. At that point, Milley thought Trump’s erratic behavior suggested “mental decline.” Since retiring, however, Milley said he's come to believe Trump is a “total fascist.”
Whether Trump is actually a fascist is the subject of much debate. A recent Guardian column by David Runciman averred that "Project 2025 [a document linked to former Trump aides] is not a fascist document...its approach is more consistent with the goal of getting sympathetic judges on the courts than a private militia into gear." It also said of Trump's verbal attacks on hecklers during his rallies, "this isn’t fascism either. Trump’s style is to lash out against anyone he gets affronted by and to express his personal grievances in the language of the mob. It’s dangerous and it’s demeaning. But... Trump has done almost nothing to organise [sic] his own shock troops."
Added Runciman, in the liberal Guardian newspaper, "Trump is an enabler, not an originator of political violence. He is too passive to be truly fascist."
Fascist or not, this doesn't get at what some see as Trump’s cognitive descent. According to now critic, former Trump reality star and aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, who spoke on CNN last night, Trump on “The Apprentice” as reality-TV star could remember the complexities of a business deal, but Trump the president couldn’t remember cabinet members’ names.
“The reason Donald Trump is canceling these interviews is that when he starts to stumble, he starts to pivot,” Newman told CNN’s Lauren Coates. “He wants to talk about you. He’ll start attacking you, Laura, instead of talking about policy issues, because he can’t recall what they are. He cannot repeat consistently his position on key issues like the economy, like crime or like immigration that are key issues to voters.”
This is what may have happened in the Bloomberg interview.
When host John Micklethwait pressed Trump to defend his position on the use of tariffs, which even the Wall Street Journalobjects to, Trump didn’t mount a counterargument, as you might expect from someone who polls better on the economy than his presidential rival. Instead, as Newman predicted, Trump pivoted to attack Micklethwait: “It must be hard for you to spend 25 years about tariffs as negative and then have somebody explain to you that you are totally wrong,” he said.
Trump's positions on various issues, however, have been consistent. He supports increased tariffs, lower taxes, and stricter border and immigration policies.
“Unplanned verbal escalation”
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asked Bob Woodward this morning to explain why Trump does not stick to normal GOP talking points. “Why does he always go to this violent rhetoric?” he asked, referring to Trump’s wish to be a one-day dictator, to jail his political enemies and terminate the Constitution. “Why does he make these violent claims when he knows that if he just talked about the economy, he would likely do better?”
Woodward’s answer is familiar to those who argue Trump is a fascist. “I think he wants to show he’s tough," Woodward said. "Being tough is central to Trump’s self-persona. He thinks that’s powerful.”
But the rest of Woodward’s answer slips into the conversation about Trump's state of mind. “The trouble with all of that, the basics of decision-making, debating and weighing, just does not take part in Trump’s circle,” he said. “There’s no planning. Who’s the team?... It’s Trump working on these problems himself.”
He could be “working on these problems himself” because he values his own counsel most. But he could also be “working on these problems himself” because he's forgetful, and it reflects his state of mind.
“It all comes from Trump,” as Woodward said. “It is unplanned. It is absent a team. … It is unplanned verbal escalation.”
I think Woodward was right to suggest that undecided voters might not believe Trump is a fascist or even care about his policy positions.
Woodward said they might want to know whether he’s fit to be president. He’s not, Woodward concludes. His voters think differently.
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