by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
Mental health is rather mysterious at times. That’s what makes it so troubling. People can seem normal then begin to act extremely erratic. In fiction, the character of Howard Beale in Network is a prime example of how this can feel to others.
So, with Trump, I just don’t know. That’s the thing about whatever is wrong with him. He can go long stretches of time seeming reasonably normal and then he does batshit insane things like look up at the sun while saying he’s “the chosen one.” That CNN is talking about Trump “blowing up” the G7 meeting this weekend at all is a testament to how bad things have gotten.
The thing I struggle with is how a real Trump mental health crisis might occur. There’s a real chance that he might just slowly grow worse in such a manner that the Overton Window kicks in and we’ll just drift into a Trump second term. We’ll just be so accustomed to him being batshit insane that by 2023 he’ll be barely functioning and we’ll just shrug it off.
But that assumes the economy is going to continue to do well. If the economy tanks in a meaningful way, we may lurch forward in the severity of his bonkers behavior. If that happens, I think there may be calls to use the existing momentum for impeachment to impeach him not for being a fucking criminal — which he is — but for the all the tweeting. Now, I only even suggest that Trump might be impeached for bizarre tweeting because apparently both Andrew Johnson and Richmond Nixon had articles of impeachment that dealt with such stuff. Johnson got in trouble for some speeches, while Nixon got in trouble for a moral general “bringing the office of president into disrepute.” (As I recall.)
This is all important because there’s a real chance that should we ever get around to actually having an impeachment inquiry the people we’ll be hearing from is psychiatrists not the usual suspects in such matters. But all of this requires a series of things to happen for us to get to that point. His crackup has to be public. The economy has to tank. And whatever behavior he’s exhibiting has to be so severe that it’s difficult for MAGA talking heads to explain it away. If those three things don’t happen, lulz.
And, really, the crucial point is Pence. There’s a reason why Pence has all but ghosted the country. My guess is he feels not only does he think he may have to mop up a post-Trump America, but he wants to leverage the general relief on the part of the country to win a full term of his own. Only after he’s won the presidency in his own right can he turn around and be the big old dick that he really is in peace.
But let me stress, we’re no where near the type of crisis we would have to be for this to happen. We’re drifting towards it, but we have a ways to go. It could be six months from now before it happens, or it could be well into his dystopian second term. All I know is how we frame Trump has changed subtly in the last few days.
It used to be the Mueller Report, now it’s if and when Trump goes completely bonkers.
