Splitsville THE MADNESS OF KING DONALD

The Somehow-Rejuvenated Newsletter for Subscribers to THE SPLIT

We have a new theory, although it isn’t new, it isn’t really a theory, and it isn’t ours. It explains everything. It provides a new angle on our contention that the US is Splitsville, in which two separate nations exist within our beloved (or, as Trump now says repeatedly, showing off a new word like a toddler proud of learning how to tie his shoe, cherished) national boundary.

But first: Here’s a sub-hed on a recent Daily Beast piece by Amanda Litman, the title of which is “Democrats’ ‘Play Dead’ Strategy Will Be the Death of the Party.” It’s perfectly accurate but, to us, represents the old, consensus view:

Democrats in Congress need to use whatever tactics they can, across every possible platform, to draw attention to Trump’s corruption, his indifference to the suffering of regular people and his complete inability to do the job he was elected to do.

Like we said, it’s perfectly accurate, as is her call for Democrats to reject the passive, wait-for-Trump-to-destroy-himself counsel of old, out-of-it fogies like James Carville and Chuck Schumer. She’s also right in urging Dems to be seen and heard attacking, defying, deploring and fighting back, starting yesterday and continuing until the mid-term election in 2026. (And stop thinking “if there is one.” Just stop.)

Where her piece falls short is in her description of Trump himself. Yes, he’s corrupt and indifferent. As for his “inability to do the job,” it is to laugh. His ability has nothing to do with it. It’s not as though he tries to be a good president but somehow just can’t seem to pull it off. (Although arguably he is able—at least so far—to do the job he was chosen by his masters to do, which is to destroy the United States of America and sell it for parts to oligarchs.) In any case, none of those failures are the primary problem. No, the primary problem can be simply stated in four succinct words.

Donald Trump is insane.

Now, before you snort “Duh!” and “What else is new?” and “No shit, Sherlock,” bear in mind that we don’t mean the everyday, shopworn notion of “insane,” which everyone uses to mean “wrongheaded as regards subjective matters of opinion,” as in the banal formulation, “You don’t like pepperoni on pizza? That’s INSANE!”

We mean literally, psychologically, psychiatrically out of his mind. And yes, we know of (and agree with) the diagnosis made by such Trump observers as his niece, Mary Trump, and forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee, that Trump is a malignant narcissist. He always has been. He’s probably also a sociopath. What he hasn’t always been, until the last few years, is barking mad and entirely nuts.

We (finally) arrived at this epiphany after reading Ross Rosenfeld’s karate-chop of a piece in The New Republic. Citing Polonius’s musing about Hamlet’s apparent lunacy (“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t”), Rosenfeld offers examples of previous American presidents undertaking to seem crazy, or not minding if America’s enemies thought they were. (He mentions Truman and Reagan but, oddly, leaves out Nixon, who explicitly bragged about his and Kissinger’s “madman strategy.”) But then he notes:

Sometimes it can be difficult to discern what is an act and what is true madness, but it’s important to recognize when there is no meaning to be found—no method to the madness.

Rosenfeld’s contention is that that’s where we’re at with Trump. And he’s not the only one who thinks so. (Keith Olbermann has been referring to him as “Dementia J. Trump” for years.) Rosenfeld notes:

That seemed to be CNBC economic analyst Steve Liesman’s conclusion last week about President Donald Trump’s tariffs. “I’m going to say this at risk of my job,” Liesman said, “but what President Trump is doing is insane. It is absolutely insane … and now he’s saying he’s putting 50 percent tariffs on Canada unless they agree to become the fifty-first state. That is insane. There’s just no other way of describing it.”

The reason we say that “Trump is crazy” isn’t really a theory is that, as every schoolchild knows (and as Google AI knows, too), “a hypothesis is a tentative, testable explanation for an observation, while a theory is a well-substantiated explanation of a phenomenon, supported by extensive evidence and repeated testing.” And do we really have extensive evidence to support such an idea?

Well, you tell us. But first review this by-no-means-complete list of Trump’s Greatest Hits, the things he’s done just over the last two months:

· Making RFK, Jr.—a crackpot whose policies are already leading to outbreaks of measles and polio—head of HHS

· Insisting, against the advice of experts across the ideological spectrum, that tariffs are a source of wealth for the nation. Then cancelling some of them when lobbied by industries that would be affected. Then restoring some. (Thus perpetuating the one thing Wall Street, CEO’s, and biz in general hate: uncertainty.)

· Banging on and on (and not always coherently) about making Canada the 51^st state—so much so that (as amusingly covered by Evan Hurst at Wonkette) the odious Laura Ingraham tried to steer him off the subject

· Firing the board of directors of the Kennedy Center of Performing Arts and naming one of the least cultured, most vulgar philistines in the country—himself—as its chairman

· Unleashing Elon Musk to make drastic cuts in agencies that keep people safe, including FAA (almost immediately—coincidentally?— resulting in a rash of plane crashes), EPA (and then crowing about the impending return of “beautiful, clean coal”), FEMA (in an era of super-storms and wildfires) and CDC (as scientists gird themselves for the possible crossover of bird flu into humans)

· Buying a Tesla (Trump doesn’t drive)

· Cutting paltry (the “savings” are trivial) amounts of foreign aid whose only purpose is to keep children from dying

· Announcing an intention to “reclaim” the Panama Canal and instructing the Pentagon to draw up plans to increase US troop presence there, while not ruling out taking it by force

· Visiting Fort Knox to “make sure the gold is still there”

· Announcing the creation of a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a US Digital Asset Stockpile.” (Trump understands digital currency as well as he understands quantum mechanics.)

· Musing about invading Mexico

· Something something Greenland

There is, of course, more. On Truth Social, he called the judge who reversed one of his orders a "Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama.” Rosenfeld adds:

On Friday, he went on another incoherent rant on social media, claiming once [Ed.—again?] that the 2020 election was stolen from him and rewriting history to blame all of our current problems, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on Joe Biden. In other Truth Social posts, he’s boasted about being a king and claimed that the “European Union was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States.”

Granted, there is a broad spectrum of what we refer to when we say “insane.” Trump is not at the stage of interrupting a wedding at Mar-a-Lago by parading through the room stark naked and commanding all the men to kiss his ass and all the women to suck his mushroom of a cock. YET. But he absolutely is delusional, incapable of telling the truth, sadistic toward anyone who doesn’t worship him, indifferent to the pain, damage, and death his policies create, and unable to see how many of his impulses and whims bring him no benefit and often cause him harm.

Mainstream media doesn’t, and won’t, talk about this. They euphemize and soft-pedal, describing Trump’s words and actions as being “unconventional” or “impulsive” or “untraditional.” But, in a very real sense, fuck them. Like we said: The statement “Trump is crazy” explains, not only everything that has happened thus far, but whatever nightmare obscenities are going to happen henceforth. Because it will only get worse. He will continue to visit cruelty on a wide range of people, institutions, and values—on decency itself—and then, when blocked or reprimanded, double down on his “enemies.” He’s a day away (if he’s not there already) from, like General Dreedle in Catch-22, naming someone he doesn’t like, and telling an aide, “Take him outside and shoot him.” (And he’s surrounded by people who will do it.)

A week or so ago we said something like, “Whether or not Trump is a witting asset of Putin and Russia, how would his behavior be any different if he really were?” We have a follow-up question: Whether you think Trump is literally insane or not, how would his behavior be any different if he really were?

So there you have it. The US is now a country consisting of two nations—one whose inhabitants believe that their President is a lunatic and that that is a bad thing, and the other consisting of everybody else: those who don’t think so, those who do think so but don’t care, and those who also think so but who (because they’re sadistic, cynical, or equally crazy) also happen to think that it’s just great. Oh, and those who can’t bear to think about it at all. Unfortunately, it’s the latter nation that is currently running the country. Into the ground.

(With no apologies to Bob Dylan)

They say that THE SPLIT should be a book

The kind you can get right through the mail

And soon, though there was some time it took,

We’ll give you the word that it’s for sale

You’ll see THE SPLIT on paper

From the west back to the east

Any day now

Any day now

It shall be released.