Trump's Weird Dream

This might explain it.

Donald Trump had a dream in which he was told that reality is an illusion, that it’s all in his head, that all that exists is what he imagines.

The notion would not be original to him. Nothing is, except his regard for himself.

He has in his employ a scientist whose knowledge extends to parasites of the brain and research on how to achieve government power while speaking in the voice of a frog imitator. That person, also experienced in psychoactive substances, could well have advised him.

Looking at just this week, just Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, it certainly seems as if Trump has concluded it’s all just an illusion. There’s evidence in support of the conclusion: I think that many of us have a hard time believing that he is President of the United States, given all the obvious reasons why he never would hold that position. So he is comfortable unleashing whatever has popped into his aging noggin.

I have joked to friends that if Trump were to appear in a large public gathering and proclaim “All hail Satan,” it would not cost him any support. On Sunday, he came close to doing just that.

At the memorial rally for the evangelist-Trump-supporter Charlie Kirk, Kirk’s widow spoke dramatically about forgiving the fellow who killed her husband. But to Trump, Erika Kirk was just his opening act. He took the stage — there were fireworks! — and in the course of a long speech largely about himself, he said of Kirk, “He did not hate his opponents, he wanted the best for them. That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them.”

It is obvious that Trump is not a believer, at least not in Christianity. What he did say demonstrated that, as did his failure to say “All hail Satan.” If he believed in Satan he would have talked about how Trump and the devil are good friends and he will be making the most beautiful deal anybody ever heard of with Old Scratch. Might have even nominated him to be the head of the Department of Eternal Damnation, his new, more accurately descriptive name for the Department of the Treasury.

Hey, when it’s a figment of your imagination you have a lot of leeway.

Then came Monday. Though he mentioned it on what he in his imagination believed was a Trump campaign event under the guise of a memorial rally for Charlie Kirk, it wasn’t really until Monday that Trump returned to his imagined job of playing doctor.

Perhaps you remember when he offered his advanced scientific knowledge on defeating the SARS-CoV-2 virus. He offered the notion that bleach, other disinfectants, and ultraviolet light might do the trick. He offered the prescription of hydroxychloroquine as preventative of and treatment for the virus that causes COVID-19. None of that worked out.

Now he has decided that the over-the-counter substance Tylenol causes autism.

Tylenol is not in my estimation a good drug. In my experience, it accomplishes nothing, certainly nothing that aspirin, ibuprofen, or naproxin sodium doesn’t do better. And it does have significant dangers. For instance, if you drink regularly and take Tylenol regularly, it can wreck your liver. There are a lot of reasons to avoid Tylenol. But autism probably isn’t one of them. (Yes, there are a couple of studies that suggest a correlation. Causation remains out of reach, at least for now.)

But if life is what you imagine it to be, why not enjoy the amusement of hauling out a croaking clown trial lawyer, who says he had brain worms and there’s no reason to doubt it, as your sidekick? In fact, why not put him in charge of the government’s approach to all health issues? So on Monday, Dr. Donald and his weird medical guy lawyer, his disreputable replacement for the other side’s disreputable Dr. Anthony Fauci, appeared to spout fever dream nonsense about autism.

Then came Tuesday.

As far as we know, Trump didn’t break anything before heading over to the United Nations building. But his stepping on the escalator in the once-trendy, now-dilapidated structure was enough to bring it to a halt. At least that’s how it seemed. And in that to the Trump administration nothing is as it appears, his angry blond mouthpiece Karoline Leavitt demanded an investigation into whomever shut down the escalator to embarrass the president. (The Times of London had reported Sunday that U.N. staff had joked about shutting off the elevators and escalators and telling Trump the U.N. had run out of money — there’s a payment dispute between the U.N. and the Trump administration.) The Associated Press reported “A U.N. official said the UN understands that someone from the president’s party who ran ahead of him inadvertently triggered the stop mechanism on the escalator. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the White House was operating the teleprompter for Trump.” During his speech to the body, Trump complained of a malfunctioning teleprompter. He blamed both on the United Nations.

Absence of the teleprompter did not prevent his speaking, as one can expect in a dream. He read from a paper script for a bit, and ad-libbed, but the latter probably had nothing to do with the broken teleprompter.

He whined that he had not gotten the contract to refurbish the U.N. building for a half billion dollars. (We must consider the possibility that for all its faults, the United Nations did not like Trump’s style, which runs toward gilded mid-quality 19th-century French brothel; if so, a look at the White House’s Oval Office today suggests that the U.N. was right.)

Trump then spoke at length about the only subject that interests him, himself. After which he lit in to the United Nations, which is always a good idea but he isn’t the man to do it. For example: “For the most part, at least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It's empty words and empty words don't solve war. The only thing that solves war and wars is action.”

You just know that every person in the room at that moment thought the same word: t*aco*, which stands for the phrase “Trump Always Chickens Out,” talking big, setting deadlines, never following through. One imagines that to the extent he actually played any role in his claimed ending of seven wars, it was because of the threat that the countries in dispute would agree to terms or he would keep talking some more about his own imagined heroics.

He mentioned, of course, his current campaign: “Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize.” Actually, no one who doesn’t owe his or her paycheck to Donald Trump says that, and no one actually thinks it. But it’s his imagined reality, not ours.

Then, having praised himself and hammered the United Nations, he advertised that he’s trying to set up a U.N. competitor, perhaps a side hustle: “I've come here today to offer the hand of American leadership and friendship to any nation in this assembly that is willing to join us in forging a safer, more prosperous world.” Whether this resonated with those countries, most all of whom have been strong-armed into accepting onerous tariffs based on fanciful, erroneous notions of economics, remains to be seen.

He then, 15 minutes into the speech, delved into foreign affairs, which were uncharacteristically on topic and characteristically stupid. Speaking of the conflict resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said he thought he’s quickly bring it to an end because he and Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin are such good buds. “But in war, you never know what's going to happen,” he wisely advised. “There are always lots of surprises, both good and bad.” One of the diplomatic skills employed by, well, diplomats, is the ability to stifle expressions of puzzlement, such as one might have when mention is made of the good surprises of war.

He then tipped his hand as to his favorite in the conflict.

“No matter what happens from here on out, this was something that should have taken a matter of days, certainly less than a week, and they've been fighting for three and a half years and killing anywhere from 5 to 7,000, young soldiers, mostly, mostly soldiers on both sides, every single week from 5 to 7,000 dead young people.” Besides his observation that in war soldiers from each side get killed, he typically failed to mention which was the aggressor and how many thousands of Ukrainian civilians have died. If his imagination were any good, he wouldn’t have left those things out.

Nevertheless, I’m sure he believes he gave a great speech, a beautiful speech, a speech far better — everyone says so — than Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. (For those interested in history and oratory, here’s Lincoln’s speech, and Trump’s.)

He mentioned that he learned only two weeks ago that many countries in Europe have been buying gas an oil from Russia, and this time I believe him. Anyone, absolutely anyone, who has been paying the slightest bit of attention has known of Europe’s reliance on Russian fuel all along. But when your fevered fantasies revolve around seeking adulation and plotting revenge when it is not forthcoming, there’s little time to give over to simple facts necessary for even borderline competent governance, which may be why he hasn’t delivered any.

But such oration! “I'm also calling on every nation to join us in ending the development of biological weapons once and for all, and biological is terrible and nuclear is even beyond, and we include nuclear in that.” How could anyone respond, beyond perhaps a courteous, “Mr. President, are you having a stroke?”

He didn’t stop there.

“We want to have a cessation of the development of nuclear weapons. We know and I know and I get to view it all the time, ‘Sir, would you like to see?’ And I look at weapons that are so powerful that we just can't ever use them. If we ever use them, the world literally might come to an end. There would be no United Nations to be talking about. There would be no nothing.” No one would voluntarily argue with that.

He then lit into other countries for not doing what he would have them do, largely as pertains to immigration.

“I see it, I can tell you. I'm really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell.” If only there were something he is not really good at!

“I mean, I was very proud to see this morning. I have the highest poll numbers I've ever had. Part of it is because of what we've done on the border. I guess the other part is what we've done in the economy.” We cannot know his opinion as to the morning and whether or not he can claim pride in it. But if these are the best poll numbers he’s ever had, he shouldn’t be crowing about it. He’s underwater, perhaps deeply underwater, and unless he improves a great deal he’ll lose the loyalty of Republicans in the House and Senate and probably be handed his wrinkled butt come the mid-term elections next year anyway. (Though, to be fair, the Democrats have an imagined reality of their own.)

Then he lit into the whole “climate crisis.” I’m sympathetic to his concerns and to the fact that it is the main area of international concern in which generally sane people are obsessively cuckoo. But he went on in such a way that he won no friends to his cause.

On and on he went on various subjects, pausing always to praise himself. Then he left. By, I’m told, a working escalator.

Tuesday afternoon, he decided to hang his vice president and his vice president’s allegedly Russian-financed pals (Tucker Carlson, et. al.) out to dry, when he wrote one of his tweet things on his tweet company’s site. In it he said that Ukraine might win against the Russian invaders and that Russia is on the verge of bankruptcy.

This caused great excitement that was nevertheless muted in that Trump actually offered no changes in his administration’s policies, saying that the American involvement would be limited to selling weapons to NATO, who would do with them as it pleased. Also, it has been widely observed that Trump is wont a.) to embrace whatever he was told by the last person he spoke with and b.) forget it almost immediately. Trump’s worshipers ascribe many virtues to him, but consistency and discipline are not among them. So he may have just been blowing off more figments of his imagination. (Though he is consistent in holding a grudge, we must give him that. Which is why during the gathering in memory of Charlie Kirk the audience was treated to a rerun of his claim that he won the 2020 presidential election, which he didn’t.) To Trump, reality is whatever he says it is. At that moment, subject to probable change.

But despite his busy day he had time to launch an online attack against the American Broadcasting Company for its failure to honor his wish that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who when last I saw him was the sidekick in a cable program called “Win Ben Stein’s Money,” be fired. If Trump and his FCC commissioner hadn’t thrown a fit last week, he would have continued to be seen by about 17 people nightly. But after a meaningless week-long fuss, Kimmel returned to the airwaves last night, and I bet the ratings were much higher than usual.

Because Trump doesn’t think things through. Even in the figment of his imagination in which he lives, he’s his own worst enemy. Which, based on his Sunday funeral speech’s consideration of his enemies, is an impressive degree of self-hatred, deserved as it may be.