Their massive impeachment hoax has failed, although it is likely that the Democrats, intent as ever on discrediting and destroying one of the most successful presidents in American history, will cue up another impeachment trial this summer, and probably fail just as ignominiously as they did this time. But before they fail again with another impeachment, it looks as if the Dems have decided to fail with another tactic they’ve used before: claiming that the president is seriously ill and incapable of discharging the duties of his office.
Nancy Pelosi signaled the new use of this old tactic when she said Wednesday: “So, again, I extended the hand of friendship to him, to welcome him as the president of the United States to the people’s house. It was also an act of kindness, because he looked to me like he was a little sedated. He looked that way last year too.”
It was an odd claim coming from someone who appears to be drunk much of the time, but why would Trump have been sedated? Leftist media hack Eric Boehlert, formerly of Media Matters, Salon, and Rolling Stone, tweeted Thursday after Trump’s speech recapitulating the attempt to frame him and thanking his supporters: “[In] light of insane speech today, it’s absolutely astonishing that over last 3 years DC press has refused to address Trump’s mental health as legit news story it’s the third rail of American journalism.”
Even before the State of the Union address, Andy Ostroy of Medium.com tweeted: “.#WhatsWrongWithTrump? Is he suffering from a neurological disorder? Brain disease? This behavior is NOT NORMAL. The American people deserve to know if #Trump is seriously ill.” Ostroy was commenting on a short video clip that Real Time with Bill Maher put together, featuring a view of Trump’s verbal slip-ups and claiming on that basis that he was unfit to be president. If that were true, only William F. Buckley and Christopher Hitchens would be eligible for the presidency, and they’re both dead.
All this is derived from the notorious book A Warning, whose author is anonymous but was supposedly penned by an administration insider, and purporting to show a mentally unstable Trump and an administration in chaos.
If this sounds familiar, it is only because it is. Michael Wolff trod this ground in Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House and Siege: Trump Under Fire, as did Bob Woodward in Fear: Trump in the White House. But those books, like A Warning, have all been discredited in their core assertions, such as A Warning’s claim that Vice President Pence supported a push to have Trump removed from office on the grounds of the 25th Amendment, which provides for the vice president to take over the presidency when the president is unable to perform his duties.
All these claims entangle the Democrats in a serious difficulty. If Trump is suffering from some serious illness and is mentally incapacitated, what does that say about them? He just bested them on impeachment. With no political experience, he beat a crowded Republican field including the leading lights of the party and then went on to defeat Hillary Clinton, of whom Barack Obama said: “There has never been a man or a woman, not me, not Bill, nobody more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.” As President, Trump has brought about record-low levels of black and Hispanic unemployment, destroyed the ISIS caliphate, freed the nation from the Paris Climate Accord and NAFTA, and a great deal more.
How did the malevolent, mentally unstable ignoramus of Democrat myth pull all this off? How is it that the best minds of their generation, as the Democratic political and media elites no doubt consider themselves to be, keep losing to this cloudy-minded dunce? And if their impeachment claims were true, how is it that Trump was able to hatch this quid pro quo scheme with the Ukrainian government to force them to investigate Joe Biden, and then cover it up so masterfully as to forestall bipartisan support for his removal from office?
The absurdity of their claims is a sign of the Democrats’ desperation. Trump’s success as president shows up the failure of their own policies and positions even more vividly than is usual when a president succeeds someone from the opposing party, as Trump campaigned on taking the government away from the elites and cleaning up the mess in Washington. That mess is theirs, and Pelosi and Co. know it. And Trump, they likely think, must be insane not to jump on the government gravy train and further enrich himself, as so many Washington insiders like Hunter Biden have done by selling their access. That’s it! He’s insane! Throw it out into the Times and the Post – maybe it will work this time.
But it almost certainly won’t. And speaking of mental illness, Democratic strategist James Carville was closer to the mark than the Democratic establishment when he said recently of his party: “We’re out of our damn minds.” A much stronger case can be made for that than for the idea that Trump is out of his.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 19 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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