Unstable Trump's threats could cost two red states billions: analysis

U.S. President Donald Trump attends the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, January 21, 2026. REUTERS/Romina Amato

Kansas City Star columnist David Mastio warns our “elderly president” and his “few fries short of Big Mac combo” behavior is potentially knocking millions of dollars off the table for the red states that supported him.

“For his last year in office Joe Biden would have been more appropriately housed in a suburban home for the aged, or at least his own home, rather than the White House,” said Mastio. “Now we should bring that same lens to bear on Donald Trump.”

Mastio, who wrote for the conservative Washington Times, pointed out that Trump often posts to social media at all hours of the night, sharing screenshots of world leaders’ text messages while trying to muscle NATO ally Denmark into surrendering Greenland. He’s also prompted a European military buildup against the U.S.

“Stable presidents don’t troll and they don’t threaten to attack allies,” said Mastio. “Indeed, talk of Trump’s infirmity is spurring hopeful talk of a 25th Amendment solution and impeachment, as if enough people in Trump’s obsequious Cabinet or the rubber-stamp Congress would dare act against the president.”

But the Republican Congress’ self-imposed neutering means Trump can continue to deliver “rambling” and “incoherent” threats that risk more injury to red states than Biden’s lethargy could ever deliver, said the columnist.

“What’s clear is that a president with a penchant for memory lapses and afternoon naps is far less dangerous than a president who would blithely alter a 75-year-old security treaty with 2 AM social media posts,” Mastio argued, adding that Trump’s “unhinged” mind is now an immediate threat his voters.

“… [C]hatter on European social media and in the local press there threatens to bring Trump’s incoherence home to Kansas City as Europeans call for a boycott of the FIFA World Cup, and European leaders ponder hundreds of billions of dollars in retaliatory tariffs targeted at industries in Trump-backing red states such as Kansas and Missouri,” warned Mastio.

Mastio points out that U.S. Naval War College international relations expert Tom Nichols called Trump’s recent press conference a “completely random 45 minutes of slushy mumbling,” and that “If this were any other president, networks would be cutting in and covering (it) with doctors and experts trying to explain what they’re seeing.”

“In Trump’s defense, he has described recently taking a test for dementia at Walter Reed and says he aced it,” said Mastio, “though he didn’t seem to understand the test’s purpose, calling it a ‘very hard IQ test.’

“In any case, Trump’s behavior shows he is far from stable,” said Mastio, and that instability risks similarly destabilizing his reddest red-state voters.

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