U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he arrives at Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida, U.S., March 27, 2026. REUTERS Elizabeth Frantz
President Donald Trump’s arrogance and braggadocio appear to be without bounds, but does he really believe his own claims of supreme power? That was the subject of debate on CNN’s “The Arena” Saturday morning.
The panel consensus, however, could not confirm that he wasn’t nuts.
Trump recently stated during an “Axios Show” interview that there are now "no limits" to his power since he started a war with Iran. As CNN host Pamela Brown argued, he now claims “he's more powerful than some of history's most brutal dictators like Hitler and Stalin.”
“There are only two possibilities,” argued Dispatch co-founder Jonah Goldberg. “Either he believes it or he's just saying it. And I'm not sure which one is better. … it's a dumb thing to get obsessed about on his part. It reflects his utter lack of ability to draw distinctions between good and bad. He only measures things on the metric and the rubric of power.”
“The fact that he doesn't recognize the actual limits on his power, as evidenced by the deal that he was forced to get into, is a sign of delusion that I think is going to create more problems in foreign policy and maybe domestic policy going forward,” Goldberg added. “Because if he doesn't actually see the limits on his power, then he's going to make the same mistakes again.”
Panelist Lulu Garcia Navarro, host of “the Interview,” said she couldn’t see in Trump’s head but could only hope he doesn’t believe his megalomaniacal claims.
“We're trying to understand how delusional is Donald Trump? … Like, does he believe his own press or is the kind of reality that he has created around himself where everyone is constantly kowtowing to him, everyone is constantly serving his ego? Or does he actually realize that there are things that he has to do? … He has entered the second administration with this feeling of being having absolute power. … And so I don't know the answer to that,” she confessed. “I have given up a long time ago trying to understand Trump's psyche.”
“I think he's just messaging,” Navarro then declared with some hesitation. “I think he's messaging to everybody. He's never going to admit that he is not numero uno and he can do whatever he wants.”