U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a dinner with the leaders of the C5+1Central Asian countries in the East Room of the White House. (REUTERS)
Daily Mail White House columnist Andrew Neil says he is in direct talks with people working around President Donald Trump and they fear they are watching his mind wither away as international forces that he aggravated gather against him.
“‘Donald is deteriorating before our very eyes,’ I was told in Washington this week by a close confidant who sees him regularly. ‘His physical and mental health is in decline. Those around him don’t know what to do about it. It can only get worse. He’s 80 – and it’s showing,’” wrote Neil on Friday.
The war isn’t just consuming Trump’s presidency, said Neil. It’s taking its toll on the President himself.
“During a recent meeting in the Oval Office, he ranted against Iran’s leaders, calling them ‘scumbags’ and ‘lunatics’ in an expletive-ridden diatribe. There is growing concern for his physical health and mental stability,” said Neil. “… But it’s not just age – or the decline in cognitive capabilities that can afflict those entering their ninth decade. Trump is lashing out at all and sundry in frustration at the lack of any good options now facing him.”
Hardliners in Tehran sense his encroaching weakness and are now so cocky they’ve rebuffed a secret US attempt to get the peace process back on track this week, forcing the White House to impotently dial up the rhetoric.
Trump is said to be in “revenge mode” according to aides. And the President sounds ever more bellicose, saying on Thursday that he was close to deciding on a ‘massive attack’.
“Even senior aides in the White House don’t know what this would mean,” said Neil “The number of influential voices in Washington who think even ramped-up airstrikes – as I write, we’ve just had the 14th consecutive night of renewed US attacks on Iran – will cow Iran into submission are now passing few. In truth, nobody around Trump really knows what to do next – or what he will do.”
“… I listened to several influential figures close to Trump mull over the options. The assumption was that some sort of ground incursion was inevitable. That is certainly the new vibe coming out of Washington,” said Neil. “They talked of seizing Iranian territory on the northern shores of the Gulf to wrest control of the Strait of Hormuz from Tehran. They raised the prospect, again, of invading Kharg Island, from which Iran dispatches most of its oil exports.”
But there was, much more worryingly, talk of using tactical nuclear weapons to ‘send a message’ to Tehran and ‘concentrate its mind’ on peace, warned Neil.
“This took me aback. ‘Do that,’ I snapped ‘and you destroy America’s reputation and standing for the rest of the century. You’ve also paved the way for President Putin to do the same in Ukraine.’
“I was met with silence,” said Neil.
