Trump isn't just a fascist

I think there are two conversations about Donald Trump’s fitness that are happening in tandem, but are not connecting, as they should.

One of them is about the former president being a fascist. This is the older of the two. It started after he was elected in 2016. It has grown in intensity since then, crescendoing to a fever pitch over the weekend when he called on using the US military against American citizens.

Indeed, his rhetoric is getting more deranged and more violent, according to Politico’s survey of 20 of his most recent campaign rallies. “What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements," said Robert Jones of the PRRI. "These are actual Nazi sentiments."

The other conversation is younger, but growing fast. That one is about his deteriorating mental health. It seemed to snap into focus Monday when Trump “swayed and bopped” on stage to music for 39 minutes in a “bizarre town hall episode,” according to the Post. This was around the time Kamala Harris said he’s “increasingly unstable and unhinged.”

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His dementia, as I am calling it, came into greater focus during an interview with the top editor of Bloomberg News. “By any objective standard,” wrote Aaron Rupar, it “was a disaster.” Aaron went on to say that his campaign now “undoubtedly realizes his rapidly degrading condition doesn’t play well with audiences beyond the maga cult.” So it has decided to cancel appearances with mainstream media outlets and retreat “to the safer terrain of nonstop rallies and fawning Fox hits.”

As devastating as each of them could be on their own to Trump’s chances of victory, these conversations feel like they’re running on parallel tracks. Some say he’s unfit because he’s a fascist. Others say he’s unfit because he’s too demented. (His brain is broken, as I put it.) But if we’re going to “try to get to the bottom of who he is,” as Bob Woodward said this morning, we ought to see these conversations as mutually reinforcing, not mutually exclusive. They are not two but one.

Yes, Trump is a fascist.

He is a demented fascist.

“He cannot repeat consistently his position on key issues”
The question of which came first, Trump’s fascism or his dementia, was apparently on the mind of Mark Milley. He was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation’s highest-ranking military man.

In an interview with Bob Woodward, Milley said Trump is “the most dangerous person ever.” As a candidate who’s “a fascist to the core,” Milley said, Trump “is the most dangerous person to this country.”

But Milley’s thinking about his core nature has evolved since talking to Woodward for his 2021 book, Peril. That book was about Trump’s failed leadership in responding to the covid pandemic. At that point, Milley had evidently chalked up Trump’s erratic behavior to “mental decline.”

Since retiring, however, Milley has come to believe he’s a “total fascist.”

But being a fascist does not explain Trump’s cognitive descent since at least 2018, as witnessed by Omarosa Manigault Newman. On CNN last night, she recalled moments on “The Apprentice” when Trump the reality-TV star could remember the complexities of a business deal, but Trump the president couldn’t remember cabinet members’ names.

“The reason Donald Trump is canceling these interviews is that when he starts to stumble, he starts to pivot,” Newman toldCNN’s Lauren Coates. “He wants to talk about you. He’ll start attacking you, Laura, instead of talking about policy issues, because he can’t recall what they are. He cannot repeat consistently his position on key issues like the economy, like crime or like immigration that are key issues to voters.”

This is what happened at the Bloomberg interview.

When host John Micklethwait pressed him to defend his position on the use of tariffs, which even the Wall Street Journal objects to, Trump didn’t mount a counterargument, as you might expect from someone who is said to be better on the economy than his presidential rival. Instead, as Newman predicted, he pivoted to attack Micklethwait: “It must be hard for you to spend 25 years about tariffs as negative and then have somebody explain to you that you are totally wrong,” he said.

Turning a polite discussion into a pissing match is one of the hallmarks of fascist rhetoric, but it’s also what happens when Trump literally “cannot repeat consistently his position on key issues,” as Newman said. He cannot prove his point, because he can’t remember what his points are. So he goes on instinct and attacks the person who’s asking.

“Unplanned verbal escalation”
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asked Bob Woodward this morning to explain why Trump does not stick to normal GOP talking points. “Why does he always go to this violent rhetoric?” he asked, referring to Trump’s wish to be a dictator, to jail his enemies and terminate the Constitution. “Why does he make these violent claims when he knows that if he just talked about the economy, he would likely do better?”

Woodward’s answer is familiar to the conversation about Trump being too fascist to be president. “I think he wants to show he’s tough. Being tough is central to Trump’s self-persona. He thinks that’s powerful.”

But the rest of Woodward’s answer slips into the conversation about Trump being too demented to be president. “The trouble with all of that, the basics of decision-making, debating and weighing, just does not take part in Trump’s circle,” he said. “There’s no planning. Who’s the team? … It’s Trump working on these problems himself.”

He could be “working on these problems himself” because he’s a pathological narcissist who won’t listen to anyone, especially if they don’t bend to his will. But he could also be “working on these problems himself” because that’s what happens when you have dementia.

In time, the world closes in. Everything gets smaller.

Yet you’re an island surrounded by an endless sea.

You could say Trump never has a plan, because he’s a fascist. When problems arise, as when the coronavirus came to America in 2020, he could simply scapegoat someone and move on. Or you could say since at least 2018, he never has a plan because he does not have the capacity for planning. “It all comes from Trump,” as Woodward said. “It is unplanned. It is absent a team. … It is unplanned verbal escalation.”

“What this man is”
I think Woodward was right to suggest that undecided voters might not believe Trump is a fascist or even care about his policy positions.

Woodward said they might want to know whether he’s fit to be president. He’s not, he concluded. He has no capacity to plan.

But that’s because of “what this man is,” as Milley put it.

Not only a fascist.

A demented fascist.

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