Bonkers!

The President Is Bonkers

What we can do about it

JENNIFER RUBIN JUN 10

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We should not be surprised that Donald Trump is mentally and emotionally imploding under the cumulative effect of plunging poll numbers, his disastrous Iran war (which constantly humiliates him as both Iran and Israel repeatedly defy his desperate attempts to control them and his phony prognostications of progress in peace talks), and an increasingly irritable Senate Republican caucus.

Trump recently suffered from supporters’ unraveling and/or disaffection (e.g. Trump’s Paramount/CBS allies’ embarrassing implosion, the defection of white working-class and male voters, another insult to faith groups reminded of white Christian nationalists’ religious bigotry), repeated legal defeats, and multiple legislative losses unprecedented for a president with majorities in both houses (e.g. a House vote to fund Ukraine, passage of the War Powers Act resolution, opposition to Trump’s sleazy slush fund, collapse of FISA Section 702 reauthorization because of outrage over the appointment of Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence).

Donald Trump and Meet the Press’s Kristen Welker in Wisconsin. (White House photo)

When you throw in the indignity of seeing his name physically scraped off the Kennedy Center building, the cancellation of musical has-beens from his cheesy, self-referential 250 Freedom bash, and the entirely expected torrent of boos from Knicks fans, you have the pathological narcissist’s worst nightmare: public humiliation. (Historian and fascism expert Ruth Ben Ghiathas explained that when their autocracies unravel, strongmen’s overwhelming fear of humiliation and loss of power compels them to lash out, grab more tightly to power, and make increasingly rash decisions in the vain hope of fending off decline.)

Certainly, Trump’s mental and physical disintegration has been on display for many years. However, it is easy to lose track of the velocity of Trump’s decompensation.

As a group of 36 mental health professionals recently explained in a stinging written statement, Trump’s outbursts are not “momentary lapses nor political theater”; they instead “reflect a rapidly worsening, reality-untethered, increasingly dangerous decline.” And this was before Trump’s explosion on Meet the Press, among the most cringeworthy presidential media appearances ever.

However, you do not have to be a medical professional to conclude Trump is getting much worse much more quickly. We should not avert our eyes from the indisputable evidence that Trump cannot cope with reality. When confronted with indisputable facts, he lashes out and retreats into denial. (As the New York Times reported, “President Trump, who campaigned on a central promise to keep the United States out of overseas wars, denied in an interview aired on Sunday that he’d ever made the pledge.”)

The “big blubbery baby man, enraged at his ebbing power” provided a disturbing image in his MTP interview, Democratic pollster and analyst Simon Rosenberg aptly noted, of an “an old, addled man clearly in profound decline.” His bloated, rage-filled, disheveled appearance and inability to engage rationally with anyone outside his cult tempt one to look away. Denial is natural when you fear nothing can be done to stave off an impending disaster.

But now is precisely the time to demand a robust debate in public, in Congress, and on the midterm campaign trail about the gravity of leaving a patently unfit, raving lunatic in the Oval Office. In light of the grave danger Trump poses, pro-democracy forces must educate the public, compel legacy media to cover his breakdown as vigorously and consistently as they did Joe Biden’s health after his 2024 debate, and pressure Republicans to remove or at least restrain him.

Democrats do not control Congress, although they do occasionally take charge of the House through discharge petitions. Nevertheless, they have successfully used so-called shadow hearings to expose urgent issues (e.g., ICE brutality). A serious, sober subcommittee (perhaps drawn from both the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee) with professional staff should conduct methodical public hearings and assemble a comprehensive report documenting Trump’s deterioration. In the laying out the circumstances and frequency of his mental/emotional breakdowns, the public should receive ample evidence that Trump’s increasingly severe meltdowns are not a function of simple aging or odd personality quirks (an absurd if not delusional interpretation of his conduct) but of dangerous mental and emotional dysfunction.

At the end of the process, Democrats (and any patriotic Republicans inclined to prevent grave harm to the country) should present a series of specific, feasible recommendations, including legislation to compel the release of all presidential medical records and to require independent medical evaluation of presidents and vice presidents. They should spell out rules to implement the 25^th Amendment. They also should make clear that once they have subpoena power after the midterms, they will supplement findings by calling witnesses to testify under oath as to his observable behavior. If Republicans defend his indefensible conduct and block common-sense measures, they will take on full responsibility for the wreckage that ensues from sheltering an unhinged, unwell president.

Next, Democrats must undertake a focused and robust push to present their findings to the press and the voters. If the president’s emotional and mental competency is not the most compelling issue of the moment, it is hard to imagine what would be. Republican House and Senate candidates need to be put on the spot in every public encounter: Do they think the president is of sound mind? What do they intend to do to, for example, protect nuclear codes? Why shouldn’t the public have full visibility into the health of a president whose conduct has been so obviously aberrant? Democrats should pound away at the issue in floor speeches, media spots, op-eds, and public forums.

If it were not obvious before, leaving Trump in power surrounded by spineless yes men unwilling to challenge him and a MAGA Congress that abets his increasingly erratic conduct and flights from reality is a recipe for disaster — and the most persuasive reason to elect substantial Democratic majorities in both houses. Nothing is more urgent to the survival of our democracy, national security, and collective well-being than to begin now to convince voters that stringent guardrails (if not, removal by 25^th Amendment or impeachment) are required to shield the United States from further harm.

Given the public’s rising disgust with Trump and his propensity to humiliate himself on a near daily basis, voters might well become convinced that extraordinary action is required to defuse the ticking time bomb in the White House.

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Hot!

 We have no AC so window shades are down, curtains closed to keep what coolness we had overnight inside.

No gardening in this heat.  

The bugs are bad too - black flies and noseeums. I was outside yesterday morning watering without my usual bug repellant because it was only going to be a short time.  Mistake! I have a nasty bite on my shoulder.

We were awakened last night with a terrific boom of thunder.  Quite the storm went through dumping a good amount of water.

I read the other day that we are still in drought status because of the status of the aquifers.  Rains like we had last night help the ground but don't do much for aquifer.  Don't quite understand what's needed for the aquifer to come back to normal.

A mostly inside day here to stay out of the heat.  I do have a massage appointment at 3:00 which will take me out. 

Biggest decision of the day will be what to make for dinner that won't add to the heat.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.

This is Very Scary

From The Contrarian.

I Warned About the Young Republicans’ Racist Group Chat. They Got a Passport.

Extremist ideas are laughed off as jokes, then defended as debate, then repeated as campaign language, then embedded into bureaucracy.

Michael Franklin

Jun 09, 2026

Last year, I wrote about the leaked Young Republicans group chat and the similar dynamics it posed to the White Citizens’ Councils. Less than a year later, the group chat got a passport.

There has been little sustained attention from American political media of last month’s 2026 Remigration Summit, even though it should be a major American political story. This was not merely a gathering of European extremists using ugly language abroad. It was a convergence point for a politics already moving through American youth conservative spaces, Republican institutions, immigration policy, and U.S. foreign affairs. And now the U.S. State Department has an Office of Remigration operating with little public visibility and serious questions about oversight.

Then-Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino in Minneapolis, Minn., in January. (Chad Davis via Wikimedia Commons)

The summit reportedly brought together figures associated with Europe’s far right, great replacement theory, Holocaust denial, neo-Nazi organizing, and racial-purity politics, while drawing American figures linked to Republican politics and immigration enforcement, including Gregory Bovino, who oversaw the horrible attacks and killings of American civilians in Minneapolis and abuse of power against Americans in Los Angeles and Chicago; and Stefano Forte, president of the New York Young Republican Club. That is what makes the lack of scrutiny so stunning. This was not simply Europeans talking to Europeans about European politics. It was an international gathering organized around a term that has now entered American political rhetoric, American diplomatic planning, and federal policy language.

Some people in that broader group chat were not random trolls. They were campaign staffers, party officials, and political appointees already moving inside Republican power. When the messages surfaced, the response was familiar: publicly condemnation of the racism as an aberration; shrugged off as youthful stupidity, private jokes, not a big deal. But the infrastructure around them kept moving. The organizations kept getting funded. Access continued. The campus chapters started platforming old-guard white nationalists. The international relationships deepened.

Now the same pipeline that produced racist chats and “edgy” fascist jokes is showing up around remigration summits alongside neo-Nazis, great replacement theorists, Holocaust deniers, and racial-purity extremists.

The New York Times reported that the head of Maryland College Republicans, Colin McEvers, introduced Jared Taylor, an old-guard white nationalist and 2026 Remigration Summit attendee, as someone who can “save our country, to keep it from becoming a non-English-speaking hellscape where white people are spit at, despised and persecuted.”

This is an institutional rot waved off as “not all Republicans,” but it is a growing problem.

The use of “Remigration” is not an embrace of neutral immigration language. It is not a harsher synonym for deportation. It is a far-right framework for reimagining the nation through removal — a way to make racial exclusion orderly, administrative, and inevitable.

In Europe, extremists use the term to argue that Western nations can be restored only by expelling immigrants, people of color, and even citizens they deem insufficiently assimilated. Now the same language is appearing in American political rhetoric, foreign policy, and far-right organizing.

That should alarm anyone who understands how racial projects move through history. . They arrive dressed as security. As sovereignty. As public order. As “protecting communities.” As “ending invasion.” As “restoring the nation.” But underneath the euphemism is the same old question: Who gets to belong and who can be marked for removal?

Great replacement theory supplies the emotional engine. “Remigration” supplies the policy vocabulary. Questioning birthright citizenship is the legal strategy. The youth pipeline supplies the next generation of messengers. And silence from political leaders and national media supplies the cover.

This is how extremist ideas become governing ideas: First they are laughed off as jokes, then defended as debate, then repeated as campaign language, then embedded into bureaucracy, then treated as if they were always legitimate.

The State Department’s Office of Remigration marks a dangerous escalation. The word that once helped European extremists make removal sound respectable is now being used by the U.S. government to describe diplomatic and deportation work.

That matters. Reporting on the office suggests that “remigration” is not simply circulating in speeches, social media posts, or far-right conferences. It is being operationalized through government infrastructure, funding streams, diplomatic pressure, and deportation arrangements with limited public visibility. When extremist vocabulary moves from the fever swamps into federal bureaucracy, the public deserves to know who authorized it, who funds it, who oversees it, and what human beings are being harmed by it.

Put beside the expected Supreme Court ruling on Donald Trump’s attempt to limit birthright citizenship, the project becomes even clearer. “Remigration” is about who can be removed. The attack on birthright citizenship is about whose belonging can be denied at birth. Together, they are not merely immigration policy disputes; they are fights over whether citizenship itself can be narrowed to satisfy a politics of racial panic.

Great replacement theory has already fueled violence against Black communities in this country. In Buffalo, a white supremacist targeted a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood and killed Black people because he believed a conspiracy theory that cast nonwhite communities as invaders and white Americans as victims of demographic extinction.

That is why the language matters. “Remigration” is not just branding for immigration hardliners. It sits inside the same ideological architecture that turned Black shoppers into targets. It turns demographic change into invasion. It turns immigrants into enemies. It teaches unstable young men that violence can be understood as defense.

So when American political figures appear around a remigration summit, when the State Department adopts the same terminology, when young Republican networks keep cultivating relationships with white nationalist ideologues, and when national media barely treats it as a story, we should be clear about what is being normalized.

This is not just hateful rhetoric. It is a politics of removal. And history has shown us where that politics leads.

The dots are not invisible, but they are not being treated with the national urgency they deserve.

And the youth aspect is what makes this especially dangerous.

These are not disconnected young men stumbling into bad ideas by accident. They are being given a pathway. White nationalist speakers are introduced on campuses as brave truth-tellers or controversial provocateurs. Young operatives are rewarded with proximity to power. Party organizations soften the language without abandoning the worldview. Internationally, they are welcomed into a broader movement that tells them their grievances are historic, not embarrassing.

They are the next generation of white nationalists who try to make racism sound intellectual, statistical, polite, and debatable.

These young operatives are being trained to govern, to message, to staff campaigns, to work in administrations, to write policy, to build donor relationships, to book speakers, to shape media narratives, and to carry the same racial project forward with cleaner fonts and better credentials.

That is the point of the pipeline. It takes what was said plainly in the group chat and teaches people how to say it as policy. This is why vague condemnation is no longer enough.

If it does not represent them, they should prove it.

They should condemn the Remigration Summit by name. They should condemn “remigration” as a policy framework. They should reject great replacement theory without caveats. They should explain whether they still stand by any public praise, endorsement, or amplification of Bovino’s immigration work. They should say whether they will attend, fund, sponsor, or appear with organizations tied to racist chats, white nationalist speakers, or international far-right networking.

And Democratic leaders should force those answers.

They should ask in hearings. Ask in letters. Ask in floor speeches. Ask in press conferences. Ask on Sunday shows. Ask at campaign events. Ask State Department officials. Ask Republican colleagues. Ask donors. Ask governors. Ask members of Congress who praise mass deportation politics while claiming not to support extremism.

Because silence has become the strategy, public questioning has to become the response. We must make the connection and the relationship between the language and the policy undeniable to reasonable people.

Readers have a role here, too.

Do not let these stories be broken apart into manageable little scandals. Do not let the racist chat be treated as a personnel problem, the campus speaker as a free speech dustup, the Remigration Summit as something happening out of America, the State Department office as bureaucratic changes, and birthright citizenship as just another court case.

That is how the machinery hides.

The story is the connection. The story is the movement from private hate to public infrastructure. The story is the same people and ideas finding new rooms, new funders, new euphemisms, new legal theories, and new government offices. The story is the ease with which a politics rooted in racial exclusion can travel from a group chat to a gala to a campus stage to an international summit to the language of American policy.

Name the pattern every time it appears.

Ask your elected officials where they stand. Push media outlets to connect the dots. Pay attention to who funds these organizations, who attends their events, who excuses their behavior, and who suddenly gets very quiet when asked direct questions.

The question now is not whether Republicans will feel shame. We know many will not. The question is whether the rest of us will keep letting them move quietly.

So, ask the questions. Name the networks. Follow the money. Demand more from the national press. Make elected officials answer clearly, publicly, and repeatedly.

I wrote last year that the Citizens’ Councils were alive, online, and saying the same old hate out loud. Now they have a passport, a policy office, and a press corps still deciding whether to call it news.

Michael Franklin is the founder and chief thought leadership officer of Words Normalize Behavior, a speechwriting, executive communications, and coalition-building agency.