Unhinged presidency, in two sentences
By Greg Sargent
August 10 at 10:42 AM
... The argument that “fire and fury doesn’t always mean nuclear” is odd, given that Trump himself said his response would be “like the world has never seen,” and the United States of course previously dropped nuclear bombs on Japan. But the more important point here is that Trump’s own senior officials are now in the position of arguing that his language isn’t as terrifyingly crazy as it sounds. They are in this position because the language both threatened maximal destruction and lacked precision, which is the opposite of what is needed in an extremely volatile situation, and because there was no serious process or input that led to the creation of this statement.
And if people are reading Trump’s words in their most horrifying light, that’s only because they have come to see him as an “unhinged madman,” but don’t worry, he really isn’t an unhinged madman. This is their defense! ...
Policy disagreements are to be expected within administrations, of course. But if anything, these divisions — exposed as they were by the need to scramble in the wake of Trump’s reckless improvising in the face of a combustible international crisis — underscore the need for a more rigorous process leading up to such presidential statements. This could grow increasingly urgent as this crisis escalates ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/08/10/trumps-unhinged-presidency-perfectly-captured-in-two-sentences/?utm_term=.be7a7ba756f7
