New Scrutiny on Trump's Mental Acuity

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0:36Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin? Or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Welcome to The Beat, everyone. I'm Ari Melber. We begin with the fallout over the president's feud with the Pope. There was the offensive post where he tried to depict himself as Jesus and later claimed that the post of Jesus was actually of a doctor. And there is a feud with the Vatican that really doesn't advance any U.S.

1:09interests at all. The backlash is a headache for the Trump camp as they look at a punishing set of problems going into the midterms. Alienating key parts of your base going into the election is not good politics. So even by that narrow measure, there is something off with Donald Trump's ability to do. what he used to do on a regular basis, which is speak at least effectively to his base and build or maintain power. He is failing that, and I will show you the verdict coming in from many places. We could show you our European allies. We could show you independents, veterans, liberals, but let's start with how this is playing among MAGA voices.

1:50That has blasphemed me in its purest form. I find it a calling. It's disgusting. You're mocking, you're mocking my Lord and Savior. That it's evil. Just evil. Yeah. Nothing more to say about it. He's crazy. Done. I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed that he would actually do that. A man I voted for and trust. Do you think this will have an effect on the elections in November in the midterms? I hope so. I hope Catholics come out and vote for the Democrats. It's really, we're in a really bad situation. You can measure this many different ways. The problems were there before Donald Trump's effort here to obviously antagonize religious voters in this country.

2:33There's also many MAGA media figures who, at times we've seen, defend almost anything he does, but more often lately on the war, on the Epstein files, and on what many people call the sacrilege and insensitive and extreme set of religious posts and attacks, they're fed up with Trump. The image on its face is sacrilegious. I think it was blasphemy. I was offended. I think he should apologize. That kind of insulting behavior, where you post something like that on social media, after going after Pope Leo, I mean, does it end? It's offensive. It's patently offensive. I don't know why the president's getting so desperate for attention that he feels the need to mock 1.4 billion Catholics.

3:18He's stepping on his own message. Very bad. He has been an unmitigated disaster. and on and on it goes. When you look at Republicans in Congress, well, Republican Majority Leader Thune says Trump should leave the church alone. Others call it ill-advised. Senator Hawley, who has been an OG kind of MAGA Trump figure, says there's only one Jesus best to stick with that. By the standard of criticism in our current era, that's already loud. Other House Republicans saying this. I talked with the president about it as soon as I saw it and told him that I don't think it was being received in the same way he intended it.

4:04He agreed and he pulled it down. That was the right thing to do. I can think of a lot of people that might be close to Jesus, and I don't think President Trump is one of them. And I think the president should focus on national security and policy and leave this debate back and forth alone and walk away. What we're witnessing is what it sounds like when even the hard right and MAGA voters and some pundits like you saw there, Megyn Kelly, react to Trump the way the majority of the country has been reacting to Trump on issues for many years. He got fewer votes against Hillary Clinton, but we have a funny system that made him president.

4:44Then he was, of course, rejected in those other midterms and in 2020, and he did come back in November 24. But most of the time, and it's easy to lose sight of this when you look up and you see the president starting wars like this and raising the price of gas and fighting with the Pope, it's easy to look up and say, wait a minute, how do we even get here? How is this person president and is this popular? And the answer is no, this is not popular. Although the November 24 victory, which was about by a point and a half spread, shook things up and had a lot of people forgetting that he was unpopular in the first term, as I mentioned, got fewer votes in both elections, 16 and 18.

5:22And that writ large, there aren't a lot of people in America who think this is how the president should act or that this is OK or that this is good. So that's just the baseline. It just happens that obviously going after the Pope and saying you're Jesus is going to apparently alienate a larger overlap of your own core supporters. But you got a lot of other people in the country who say, yeah, it's not presidential. Duh, none of this has been presidential the whole time. It's also getting the late night treatment. he posted this ai image depicting himself as jesus presumably trying to heal john stewart wait the guy in the bed can i just are you from the picture it looks like it was touch and go with me for a while

6:11but thank god in my time of need i was surrounded by family uh Donald Trump wants us to believe that he thought this was a doctor. If I'm in a doctor's office and that man walks in, I'm thinking I died. So the jokes kind of write themselves. There are broader problems, though, that everyone is living through in reality, including how this war is rattling the economy. The International Monetary Fund now put out grim prospects that this kind of oil market disruption could slow economic growth, even if we get through the war. meaning some of the damage is done, and it could make inflation rise and ups the risk of a recession.

6:52So Trump has a shrinking tent, as Axios puts it, and he is at a place where he either doesn't know or doesn't care about just how badly it's going. I want to bring in Molly Jong-Fast, contributing writer for The New York Times, host of the Fast Politics podcast, and Che Komen-Durie, political strategist and Obama campaign veteran. Che, what do you say to people who might be watching tonight and go, oh gosh, that's what MAGA voters and Megyn Kelly sound like when they could easily be at a No Kings protest or be a Trump critic over the last entire period of his political life? Because they seem mad that he's unpresidential, mad that he's not putting American interests first, and then mad that he lies and is churlish and immature about the scandals he creates.

7:41It just happens these, as I mentioned, resonate more for some of them. Yeah, I mean, if the Trump administration were a TV show, it would be canceled by now. The reality is, and I understand that people who are Christian, I'm not Christian, but I understand that people who are Christian are deeply offended by this post. But he has done this before. Just a year ago, he posted an image of himself as the pope after the death of Pope Francis. And it was, to be honest, just a minor kerfuffle. I mean, Lindsey Graham was like, oh, that wasn't a great thing he did. And that was it. It was kind of forgotten about and everybody moved on.

8:19It's interesting that this particular post has sort of had this enduring negative commentary. And I think the reason is that the Iran war has really changed things. The Iran war was basically Trump's Katrina moment. It was an inflection point where it was very clear to even his most ardent supporters that this presidency is off the rails and this movement, as it was led by Trump, appears to have hit a dead end. So you see this as almost the gateway. Do you think this is conscious for many of these folks or this is just how it's actually spilling out? I think this is how it's actually spilling out.

9:03I don't think it's particularly conscious. I mean, one thing I'm reminded by is 20 years ago, David Brooks talked about the enormous Republican anger when George W. Bush was president in the second term about illegal immigration, about the undocumented workers who were then coming into the country from Mexico. And he said there was actually a lot of anger about the Iraq war in the conservative base, but you couldn't say it. You know, there was such a loyalty to Bush and a loyalty to the war that you couldn't say it. So immigration kind of became the issue where all of that anger was allowed to sort of pour out.

9:38And I think this is the same thing here. You know, a lot of the people, you know, who were offended by this. I mean, a year ago, President Trump called Jewish Americans shylocks. He campaigned as an Islamophobe saying he wanted to ban Muslims. I mean, he has basically offended all of the Abrahamic religions right now. I'm sure for Hindus and Buddhists, our turn on the barrel is going to be coming soon. But this is basically what he does. This is what he has always done. But now people are just kind of tired and fed up with it. Molly? I think, yeah, AI Jesus does not happen in a vacuum, right? This is about the gas prices.

10:19This is about the war in Iran. This is about just governing in a way that's completely the opposite as to what he said he would do. And if you look at his poll numbers, I mean, we're like in Nixon territory here. So I do think this is the sort of vessel for that. But I think that's a really good point. And we have seen Donald Trump do offensive stuff like this before. And people have said his supporters have made excuses for him. They've said he's trolling or this is the humor or this is it's to own the libs. These same people said that just a few months ago. And now they're saying this is a bridge too far.

10:55And I do think it has to do with the larger situation, the larger landscape. Yeah. And Trump obviously views what the pope said is somehow an attack on him or a big a big claim. That also shows a kind of a loose grip on reality because religious leaders commonly talk of peace. And it was not playing out here in our newsrooms or anywhere really relevant to American politics as if the pope had gone after him and drawn some big line. It was really pretty standard. So it shows that his sense of things is off. J.D. Vance trying to thread the needle. Take a take a look at him on Fox. I certainly think that in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of, you know, what's going on in the Catholic Church and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.

11:56Yeah, I mean, he's got look, this this is a guy who just was in Hungary, right, campaigning for Viktor Orban. So this is, you know, we're just going to stay in our lane here in America. But the idea was that the pope was talking about peace. He wasn't talking about some American, you know, he wasn't saying, like, you should go, you know, you should get rid of the, you know, whatever, the metric system. He was not, you know, getting into the nuances of policy. He was just talking about peace. And Donald Trump so personalized that that he found he was offended by it. And I think that says a lot more about Donald Trump than it does about the pope.

12:37Yeah. And Che, the entire Jon Stewart piece last night was definitely worth a watch. He makes the point that Trump isn't into it anymore. He's not good at it. He's not lying well, something we had discussed actually this week. And that's sort of filtering out beyond political junkies as well. And I'm curious what you think about that, because for someone who, of course, had his own reasons for wanting to come back into power, and that's not unique to him. Most politicians want both terms, etc. He certainly doesn't seem like he's into it. They also made fun of the fact that, well, you don't have to go do the Pakistan negotiations yourself.

13:16The president often will send someone. him being at, you know, a wrestling match and just cavorting around and no empathy or care for what the public is going through with gas prices and the military risk, that all of it just seems like he's not actually into the job either. Yeah, I mean, he definitely seems checked out. I mean, it's why, you know, James Carville, I think even on this show, has said he believes Trump will simply pack it up next year and leave the White House. I don't know if I would go that far, but you can definitely see it in the way he is conducting himself. He is very much checked out.

13:54And one of the things about Trump always was that he was energized by fighting, by the rallies, by being this entertainment figure. He no longer seems quite energized by that anymore. Now it seems like much more that he's kind of just going through the motions. You know, he's kind of like an aging rock band playing his like old hits and doing so in a way that's like so unenthusiastic where you wonder like why he even bothered composing the song in the first place. There is definitely like a like a sort of a Leonard Skinner, aging Leonard Skinner, Freebird quality to like what Trump is doing now, where he doesn't even seem to be care.

14:36Yeah. And then when, well, there is an arc to big acts that when in the last years, it feels more like they're a diminished cover band of their own classics. And then you have to decide, do you go? Because it's nostalgia and it's fun to be at the show or not. The stakes here are obviously much higher. Molly and Chase, stay with me. Quick break. We're back in 90 seconds.

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16:19We're back with Molly John Fast and Che Comanduri. Che, where does the Iran war go for Trump if he's blockading the blockade, which Jon Stewart also had good lines on last night saying, oh, you're going to rough up my store? I'll rough up my store myself. I'll show you. I mean, it really is something to behold. and everyone can see, you talk about the emperor has no clothes, the emperor has no foreign policy strategy, right? Perhaps not quite as exciting as clothes, but it still is what everyone has noticed. I mean, you don't have to be a war expert to say, well, the gas was cheaper, now it's more expensive.

17:00You heard that it goes through this straight. Now that's closed. I mean, people are hearing the problems, Jay. Yeah, I mean, there was no plan B. And for me, the most telling anecdote from the very long Maggie Haberman piece about Trump's decision to go to war was when his advisers were really concerned about what would happen. And he said, well, it's going to work out because it always does. And I think for Trump, it has up until now always worked out. I mean, you know, he has, you know, he actually had an assassination attempt that he survived. He has came back from the political dead. He has beaten indictments and convictions.

17:46He has done incredible things. He just seems to have at every turn have defied all the political odds and been enormously lucky. But the reality is luck runs out. You know, there was an anecdote that Napoleon used to ask whether his generals were lucky. Well, the problem is, is that for Napoleon, the luck eventually ran out. And the Iran war is looking a lot like Donald Trump's war to live. I also think, remember, Donald Trump became president and he was like, I'm going to cut spending and we're going to end wars. And he did so much, you know, I'm making peace. I'm putting these people together.

18:22We're going to bring peace. He was so mad that he wasn't going to get a peace prize that FIFA made up a peace prize for him. He's the inaugural FIFA peace prize. You know, he was all about peace and cutting spending. Right. That was like the thing. I mean, maybe he wasn't really doing it as much as he was talking about it, but he was talking about a lot. And then he sort of pivoted to just foreign wars without much of an explanation. And even the Gulf Wars, there was an explanation. There was a want to get the American people on board with this. the American people are being told, like, trust me, and gas is more expensive.

18:57And what I think the American people are not seeing, and, you know, Jason Crow was on Morning Joe this morning talking about this. This is costing so much money. This war is costing more than a billion dollars a day. And, you know, this is going to end up having real long-term consequences. Yeah. No, it's, as you say, it's really extraordinarily a breach with what he told people. And the duality is a lot of people felt like, yeah, well, you know he's a liar, right? You figure that out by now. And then you're watching people on the war, on religion, on prices, realizing, oh, my God, he lied to us.

19:29And it may hurt him in the midterms. Molly and Che, thanks to both of you ahead. By the end of the hour, Michael Pollan, the New York Times vet and great author, is here with a book that could really blow your mind. I'll explain. Coming up, though, from Jeffrey to Schumer to Tucker to Alex Jones, questions, serious evidence backed questions about the president's declining mental state. I don't think there's anybody outside of the United States who believes that Trump is sane.

20:06Donald Trump has been unusual for a long time by the standards of certainly political figures or most people in public life. But that doesn't mean that that is a baseline that is good for American leadership, policy, national security. That's one level. It also doesn't mean that a further decline on his behalf should be excused because of past inappropriate and unusual behavior. He is erratic. It is alarming people. Jon Stewart, who we mentioned, was mocking Trump's outlandish claim that his Jesus photo was not a Jesus photo, that it was a doctor.

20:42God, do you even care about lying to us anymore? Is it over? Is this relationship gone still? Your lies used to have a real spark. They're eating the cats and dogs. Venezuela stole the 2020 election. And now the best you've got is, Oh, no, you're not here. What's a Jesus? I'm a doctor.

21:08You need to find your happy place and fast. We expect better lies, sir. Better lies is a joke, but part of the punchline is that Trump has clearly lost his fastball, even when it comes to propaganda. Former allies and advisors question whether Trump has grown unbalanced. They say he's a lunatic. Some say he's clearly insane, according to New York Times reporting. The social media posts that he has shared lately are not just about inappropriate words or extreme jokes in AI pictures. He proclaimed he would wipe out an entire civilization. And that means you have people viewing him as a deranged autocrat, mad with power and disinhibited with a mind in decline.

21:52Again, this is also something discussed on the right. It's absolute madness. How can any person that is mentally stable call for an entire civilization of people to be murdered? Those people who are in direct contact with the president need to say no. I'll resign. I'll do whatever I can do legally to stop this because this is insane. And he does babble and, you know, sound like the brain's not doing too hot. In the second term, the Times reports that Trump is less restrained and more incoherent, more profanity, speaks longer, regularly makes comments rooted in fantasy rather than fact. Again, his penchant for lies and exaggeration are a different issue than whether, as allies and observers say, he is now someone who does not have a grip on reality at all.

22:49And he has been seen going off on all kinds of tangents. To 25 million and it would be better. It would be better. See this pen right here. The stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland's already cost us a lot of money. So this pen is very inexpensive, but it writes well. I like it. I picked those drapes in my first term. I always liked gold. I love the government like I love myself economically. The black mamba, the brown mamba, and the viper from Peru. I got all you people looking and you're saying, there must be something wrong with Trump. The question is not whether people think this is funny or entertaining.

23:38we're in the middle of this war and the question, very clearly, we must ask, is the president okay? We'll always tell you what's happening. The White House pushes back hard on this. They say Trump is sharp, and this is the usual critiques that he faces. There are veterans, though, who've worked with him, and they say they see a decline. Indeed, this came up when we were interviewing a former White House lawyer on the beat. I think there's been a significant decline. He's always been driven by narcissism, but I think the dementia and the cognitive decline are palpable, as do many experts, including many physicians.

24:16I don't think there's anybody outside of the United States who believes that Trump is sane.

24:25Regardless of where you live, what do you believe? Do you have the evidence to make a good assessment? It does matter. The last time a president faced this, what started with the idea that nothing would change, ended with an unusual campaign switch. You don't know where these things lead. Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Robinson on this important issue next.

24:48We're back with Gene Robinson, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, MSNOW. Analyst, I went through a lot of the evidence here. Your view of the president's mental position, whether he's in some decline that can be fairly observed, and how we should deal with this. We went through this with President Biden as well, and there seems to be a responsible way to do it in less responsible ways. Well, it certainly looks like decline to me. I think there's a combination of pretty evident decline. I mean, if you were sitting next to someone on a subway car and that person started talking the way Donald Trump talks on most days now, you would get up and move.