Trump's 100% approval among MAGAs exposes who actually suffers from derangement: expert

The people with so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome are not who you may believe them to be, states Michael Tomasky, writing in The New Republic.

One look at recent polling provides a clue, the piece claims.

“Nate Silver found Trump’s approval slipping into uncharted territory, and approval of the war generally polls in the 30s—but at the same time, an NBC News poll discovered that among self-identified MAGAs, Trump’s approval stood literally at 100 percent to zero.”

So who earns TDS honors? “I’d say that we shouldn’t even accept the presumption that Trump Derangement Syndrome applies to people like us,” Tomasky writes. “It does not. The people who suffer from TDS in this country are the ones who support him.”

He adds, “Awareness is a far heavier burden than derangement.”

Case in point on that argument was Trump’s recent quip during his press availability with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. A Japanese reporter asked him why he didn’t inform U.S. allies before starting the Iran war. Trump’s response included this gem:“Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?”

Uproar predictably ensued in the U.S. and Japan, “a combination of outrage and resignation that the president of the United States is both an idiot and a moral eunuch, from whom such simultaneously tedious and offensive bilge is expected.”

Perhaps the worst part, Tomasky writes, “is that Trump likened the U.S. attack on Iran to the Japanese attack on Hawaii. Trump was saying it was a good thing that the United States emulated the actions of a fascist regime that had killed millions and raped infants in China. Still, the details of history mean nothing to Trump. History is only about great men, and whether they win or lose.”

That attitude is reflected in the current Iran quagmire. Trump was somehow convinced that he could beat Iran “by sheer dint of his will.”

“That’s precisely the kind of thing you come to believe when you’ve cheated your way through life,” Tomasky writes. “Am I overstating things? Do I suffer—gasp—from Trump Derangement Syndrome?”

Tomasky underlines his final point on that by citing an essay from Simon Lazarus, who warns liberals not to become obsessed with Trump, but to focus on his supporters.

“He’s right about that,” Tomasky concludes.