As you all know by now, after attacking the Pope on Truth Social–calling him on “weak on crime” (!) among other things–Trump posted an image of himself in robes, bathed in sunlight, seemingly in the middle of healing a sick patient by touching him. (The New York Times and other media outlets have posted the image.) The image is ridiculous, crass, boorish, stupid, and entirely-in-character. It’s managed to inflame even his conservative religious followers and was almost certainly meant to irritate his opponents and, at a minimum, get him some non-Epstein-files attention. By the way, my wife has a question: why were Trump’s religious followers so angry about the silly image that Trump posted but seemingly indifferent to his dropping the F bomb in a threat to Iran in his Easter Sunday message?
As disgusting and deranged as the image is, what I thought it wasn’t was an argument for invoking the 25th Amendment. After all, some of his followers actually think he has been sent by God to defeat the forces of . . . whatever. I won’t play zealot whisperer.
Anyway, in the wake of Trump’s war against Iran (which we have totally won, if you haven’t heard), his indifference to Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians (sorry, but that’s what it is), and his attack on the Pope, his embrace of some sacrilegious iconography seemed to me more to reflect incredibly bad taste and on-brand posturing than out-and-out 25th Amendment-worthy dementia.
But Trump’s defense of the image has changed my mind. Denying he had any intention of presenting himself as a Jesus figure (and attributing the very idea that he was doing so to “fake news”), he said “I thought it was me as a doctor, and had to do with Red Cross, as a Red Cross worker, which we support.” The technical term for that rationalization is “batshit crazy,” (as well as a strange word salad), and anyone who would offer it (I’m talking about you, Donald) is too mentally ill to be President. Bring on the 25th Amendment.