Rachel Maddow told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that the fire alarm had been sounded on Trump’s mental health and the White House official who wrote the op-ed is telling Congress to do something.
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Maddow said, “This is an unusual day in American history. It’s hard to say. There is nothing new under the sun, but this is something new and it is — I just feel like somebody is trying to pull the fire alarm and I’m not sure that we know as a country how we are supposed to respond when an alarm like this is sounded. This is somebody who is loyal to the president and seeing the president up close if we believe the premise of this op-ed, saying that the president is, you know, is erratic to the point of being so dangerous that people are defying the constitution and defying their loyalty to him to undermine what he’s doing in order to save the country from his impulsive recklessness and his — what is essentially described as his mental instability.
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Wallace asked Maddow if some of this was on the press for being afraid to discuss Trump’s mental state.
She answered:
I think — I think there is — yes, it’s on us. But I think the psychological barrier we have to grappling with this stuff is understandable because there is no obvious thing to do because of it, right? That’s why today feels like a start of something or the end of something. It feels like a pivot point. This is somebody inside the White House signaling to the outside world there is a very, very serious problem. It’s one thing for us to all grapple with what we think is behind what we can see as his erratic and inappropriate behavior.
But for us to not only read about it but recognize it and make a decision about it, we have to know what our options are in that circumstance and our options are dependent on people who are close to the president and certainly people who are in the president’s own party being willing to not just admit it but talk about trying to fix this problem. There are constitutional remedies for a president who is and they are not partisan constitutional remedies. They’re American constitutional remedies. And it will require people close to the president, people in the administration and people in the Republican Party to start seeing those as on the menu of options before the country can grapple with what we’re now told is a serious crisis with mental health.
The Alarm Has Been Sounded On Trump’s Mental Health
It is out there now. Trump’s mental health was written about in The New York Times by a senior White House official who works for him. Rachel Maddow was correct. This is a massive alarm bell. It is also a test for Congressional Republicans. If they continue to defend Trump, now that his mental instability is public knowledge, it will confirm to voters that their only option for stopping Trump is to vote for Democrats in November.
If Republicans choose to ignore the alarm, they will be sealing their own doomed fate in November.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
