The last couple of years of my mother-in-law’s life were spent in a dementia care home. Visits involved a lot of conversational repetition and meeting random people with weird, unbelievable stories relayed with all seriousness as if they were actors reading a script in a Monty Python sketch. They lived in a completely different world, often believing they were still at home or about to go to work or pop out for a bit of shopping. It was sometimes hard not to laugh. You felt you had to play along with them and join in on the understanding that we were all in their parallel universe. Trump’s press conference yesterday had a similar feel.
The president of the United States wore a bright red “Trump was right about everything” cap and rambled on exactly like a dementia patient speaking from a place deep inside his own personal reality. The assembled press pack fired questions as if he were a normal, sane person, and carefully jotted his words down as if they actually meant something.
Gianni Infantino, head of FIFA (and no stranger to corruption allegations, he was named in the Panama papers) was in the WH alongside Trump to announce that the draw for the 2026 World Cup will be held in Washington in December. Mr Infantino has been accused of having an autocratic style himself, so presumably a Trump fan, but even he seemed baffled by Trump’s unhinged performance.
This clip will give you a flavour:
President Trump, "Putin has been very respectful of me and our country" Journalist, "Putin attacked a US factory in Ukraine"— Farrukh (@implausibleblog.bsky.social) 22 August 2025 at 19:23
While talking about Putin and the war in Ukraine, Trump, looking unusually exhausted, veered off into threats to deploy US troops in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. It was jaw-dropping. I expected men in white coats to rush in at any moment and drag him off in a straitjacket. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, but I’m convinced it will one day.
Lewis Goodall, the former BBC journalist writes in his Substack blog about how European leaders and others were living in Trump's “mental slipstream” trying to make sense of what comes out of his mouth, and uttering words themselves in response that they couldn’t possibly believe in a month of Sundays. I am certain this is how everyone deals with him, including his own staff and cabinet.
Nod in agreement, pick out the occasional nugget of sense, avoid upsetting him, and try to coax the world's most powerful man down a semi-reasonable path of your choosing. This is why nobody knows from one minute to the next what he will do. Even when you think he’s made a decision, that isn’t the end of it because he can do any number of 180-degree U-turns and nobody bats an eyelid. They just go back to following the playbook, nod in agreement…..etc, etc.
But beyond the black clown show, Trump is behaving with the sort of authoritarian agenda that Adolf Hitler would recognise - and I'm not exaggerating.
Christina Pagel, a professor of operational research at University College London, is systematically logging Trump's actions - ones that she considers undermine democracy - on a website: Trump Action Tracker. We are barely seven months into his second term, and already she has noted the first 1,000! That is about five per day on average. It's well worth a click.
I wouldn’t suggest that any of the things he's doing are his own agenda. It's far more likely to be that of the authors of Project 2025 and his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who is a constant malign presence hanging around the Oval Office. You rarely see or hear Trump's actual CoS Susie Wiles, she’s probably trying to manage the ensuing bedlam and Trump's planet-sized, if extremely fragile ego.
Investigations are being launched into allegations of financial impropriety against senior Democrats, including Adam Schiff, a California Senator, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who prosecuted Trump for fraud. It’s simply off-the-charts hypocrisy for a convicted fraudster to accuse others of misconduct and use all of the apparatus of the state to investigate perceived enemies who may or may not have not been entirely truthful on an old mortgage application. He has done far, far worse.
If any of these cases ever get to court, a judge or jury will toss them out. It is only intended to send a message to others. Defy Trump and expect to be mired in legal actions for years and at huge personal expense.
His former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, had his house raided yesterday after it was suggested he had somehow mishandled classified documents, the very thing we know Trump did at Mar-a-Largo in 2021-22. The president only escaped prosecution by being elected in 2024.
Trump is leading the most incompetent, vindictive, white-supremacist, and corrupt government in US history and by a very big margin. Nothing and no one comes close. The midterm elections in 2026 would normally be expected to deliver a sharp slap in the face to Trump and the Republican Party, but there is serious gerrymandering going on to ensure they retain a majority in the House and the Senate.
Constituency boundaries are being redrawn to benefit Trump, and he is talking about banning mail-in ballots. Nothing in the record of the last eight months would lead you to believe anything is beyond them. Giving up power is not on the agenda. I think many of the people around him know they have laid themselves open to potential misconduct charges and will be willing to do anything to avoid a Democrat victory.
In the WH last week, Trump proudly showed European leaders his merchandise, including Trump 2028 hats. I really do think he plans to run for a third term. For Trump, the only certain alternative is jail.
Hopes of a Nobel prize fade
Trump's hopes of a Nobel Peace Prize are fading fast. The Wall Street Journal (Murdoch-owned) has a report: How Trump’s Ukraine Peace Push Stalled Out in Four Days (no £).
On Monday, he was boasting about "quickly brokering peace to end the bloody Ukraine conflict. By Thursday, he was saying that Kyiv had no chance of winning the war without new attacks on Russia."
"The failure to reach a diplomatic breakthrough stems in part from sharp differences in negotiating style between Putin and Trump. The U.S. president, former aides said, has an improvisational approach that is heavily dependent on personal relationships. Putin is methodical in his preparation and unsentimental, said former U.S. officials who have closely observed the Russian leader.
I like the way that Trump's complete geopolitical ignorance and incompetence is described as an "improvisational approach," which really amounts to making himself look good for the next news cycle and hang the future. Like all dementia sufferers, for him, the recent past doesn't exist.
And the solemn 2024 campaign pledge, repeated on multiple occasions, that he could resolve the Ukraine war in one day, is now described by him as just a bit of 'sarcasm' according to the WSJ.
Never mind the Nobel Peace Prize, he'll be lucky to avoid a padded cell.
