“Is Trump losing his sanity?”

I’m not talking about his well-documented lifelong narcissism, his sociopathic inability to feel or even understand the pain of other people, his bullying, or even his compulsive lying, greed, and lechery; this is about whether he’s fit for the job he’s holding or is losing his touch with reality in a way that endangers both our nation and world peace.

When Trump held his press conference announcing the invasion of Venezuela and the arrest of Nicolás Maduro, a reporter asked the most basic question imaginable: Who is running Venezuela now and going forward?

Trump first claimed that he was in charge, but then when other reporters asked for details he waved his hand toward the men standing behind him and said, “They are.” Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, General Dan Caine, and Pete Hegseth.

The expressions on their faces told the real story: Surprise, confusion, and even alarm. This was clearly, visibly news to them. Shocking news, even.

Did he just decide to BS his way through the press conference like he’s done so much of his life? Didn’t he realize this was a violation of both international law and the US Constitution? Did he think for a moment that he’s the king of the Americas? Or the world?

The next day we discovered the truth their expressions revealed; there was no plan for governing Venezuela, or even trying to via an occupation Iraq-style. There was no congressional authorization; in fact, he told the oil companies before the raid but didn’t bother to inform Congress until yesterday. (Although the oil companies now say he’s lying.)

There was no public debate and no involvement of any visible constitutional process involved in this invasion and body-snatch. Under our federal system, the president doesn’t get to just improvise an occupation or administration of a foreign nation from a podium.

Even Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush didn’t try to pull that off; all sought congressional authorizations for their wars and each gave explanations that at least gave a hat-tip to the traditional American values of democracy, peace, and the rule of law.

Congress, after all, declares war under our Constitution, as well as controlling the purse that makes that war possible. Even the idea of “running” another country would require massive legal, diplomatic, and military frameworks, and now we discover that none of that stuff existed. Instead, apparently, Trump had an impulsive thought or idea and just blurted it out.

That moment should have set off loud alarms throughout Washington and should have shot across our media like a meteorite. Instead, it drifted by as simply another strange episode in a presidency that’s taught us to pretend the abnormal is now normal.

This also isn’t a partisan observation; I’m describing precisely the scenario the Framers and a later Congress worried about when they designed safeguards for presidential incapacity. The 25th Amendment wasn’t written for removing villains but rather for those moments when a president can’t or won’t reliably discharge the duties of his office but doesn’t have the good grace, insight, or ability to step down himself.

But constitutional tools are only as strong as the people willing to use them.




Modern America, has elections, courts, and a theoretically independent Congress. And we have the 25th Amendment. What we lack right now, however, is courage in the GOP and Trump’s cabinet.

Republican members of Congress know that a president can’t unilaterally invade or administer foreign nations on his own whim or impulse. They know that threatening annexation destabilizes the entire world, and Trump’s handed both Putin, Netanyahu, and Xi the rationalizations they all crave to expand their own empires.

Even Republicans know that governing by impulse isn’t strength but, instead, represents a very real danger to our republic. And yet they remain silent, calculating that confronting Trump is riskier to their careers than indulging him is to the country.

That GOP calculation is the real threat.

Trump’s love of military spectacle also fits perfectly — and dangerously — into this pattern.  Trump treats America’s armed forces as props in his own pathetic personal drama. Rallies, salutes, parades, flyovers, and dramatic announcements substitute for deliberation, applause substitutes for legitimacy, and the human costs, the constitutional limits, and the long-term consequences are all fading into the background.

Mad kings rarely stop themselves: they’re stopped when the people around them decide the country matters more than the crown.

Mad Kings Don’t Stop Themselves. They Must Be Stopped – CommonDreams full report.