The mainstream media has begun targeting Trump’s sanity

by | Oct 18, 2017

This article originally appeared at Anti-Media. 

 

Punch “Trump impeachment” into the search engine of your preference right now, and you’ll get a screen packed with articles on the subject. Anyone who follows politics — or even just glances at the news from time to time — will understand that this possibility was inevitable.

It’s no secret that the mainstream media and their partners in the Washington establishment never wanted the former reality TV star in the Oval Office. And lately, the method by which they hope to remove him is becoming increasingly clear.

According to the current theme in the media, the U.S. president is out of his mind.

The assault on Trump’s sanity began last Sunday, October 8, with an interview Senator Bob Corker gave to the New York Times. That interview was given following a heated exchange just hours before between Corker and the president on Twitter. During that interaction, the senator lamented that under Trump, the White House has become an “adult day care center.”

Corker told the Times that as president, Trump behaves “like he’s doing ‘The Apprentice’ or something” and that the reckless manner in which he interacts with other world leaders is putting the United States on the “path to World War III.” The senator said Trump’s behavior should be concerning for all:

“He concerns me. He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.”

The next day, POLITICO, which spoke with “10 current and former administration officials, advisers, longtime business associates and others close to Trump,” ran an article detailing how the president must be “managed” in order to keep him from “going off the rails.”

Then, on Wednesday, NBC revealed that in a meeting back in July, Trump “surprised” his senior military advisors by requesting what amounted to a tenfold increase in the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The point of the piece, as NBC didn’t attempt to hide, was to highlight the president’s inexperience with such matters and to demonstrate that his desires are often at odds with both his staff and common sense.

That same day, Vanity Fair published a piece by Gabriel Sherman, who spoke with a “half dozen prominent Republicans and Trump advisers.” Those individuals painted a picture of a president who is “unstable” and “unraveling” and “consumed by dark moods.” Sherman wrote that they described “a White House in crisis.”

Also on that Wednesday, the Washington Post ran a piece claiming that over the summer, Trump “threw a fit” over the fact that advisers like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson were trying to convince him that the Iran nuclear deal of 2015 was beneficial to the U.S. The president has since decertified that deal and kicked it to Congress.

That night, talk show host Stephen Colbert used his platform to ask, as Esquire wrote Thursday, “the right question.” Citing the Vanity Fair report that Trump was “unraveling,” Colbert said on his program: “That means up until now, he’s been raveled.”

The article from Esquire directly stated the message the mainstream media is currently trying to deliver to the public: “There is genuine concern that the president is not fit.”

It was part of a one-two punch from the outlet, which ran a piece on the same day titled “The Conversation About Trump’s Mental Health Is Finally Changing. But Is It Too Late?” That article focused on a new book, published October 3, called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.

The book, put together by a forensic psychiatrist from Yale University, is a collection of assessments from mental health professionals on the president’s sanity and mental stability. Unsurprisingly — and as Esquire points out — the consensus presented in the book is that Donald Trump, among other things, is a narcissist and quite possibly a sociopath.

On Friday, Newsweek published a blog post by Robert Reich, chancellor’s professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Reich, who claims to have spoken to an unnamed Washington insider, wrote that others on Capitol Hill are thinking of following Senator Corker’s play — namely, “sounding the alarm” about Trump’s mental state.

The following day, Salon ran an article that asked flatly in its title if Donald Trump is a sociopath. The author, Chauncey Devega, talked with one of the mental health professionals who contributed to new book on Trump. That psychiatrist, Dr. Lance Dodes, spoke of his field’s “duty to warn” the public about the president’s psychological instability.

Mainstream outlets continue to cite articles like these. For instance, on Monday, Salon republished the blog post from Robert Reich. These publications, either by hint or direct statement, point to the potentiality of Donald Trump’s impeachment.

Impeachment, however, is not the president’s only concern, as The New Yorker highlighted Monday. There is currently a movement by mental health professionals, in coordination with members of Congress, to remove Trump by way of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

That amendment, as The New Yorker points out, gives “the Vice-President and a majority of the Cabinet — or, alternatively, a congressionally appointed body,” the authority to “determine that the President is ‘unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office’ and remove him.”

The likelihood of an actual Donald Trump impeachment remains anyone’s guess, as does his removal via the 25th Amendment. But as Jeannie Suk Gersen wrote for The New Yorker Monday, “it’s a real turning point” when mental health professionals are so willing to organize to oust a standing U.S. president.

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