Over the past week, President Donald Trump’s actions regarding the U.S. Navy revealed that the Commander in Chief is “seriously mentally ill.” This is according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who on Monday explained why Trump’s confused military priorities suggest that he’s “sundowning.”
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As Krugman notes, reports have emerged about “the horrific conditions on board the USS Lincoln, the aircraft carrier that’s been stationed for a very long time without, it appears, adequate resupply and with toilets flooding. Apparently just horrific conditions, which turn out to be not unique to that ship: Other ships are having problems. There’s the USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship, which apparently has run out of feminine hygiene products, among other things.” Trump was dismissive when asked about the situation, prompting families of suffering sailors to say he should be “ashamed” of his mismanagement.
Rather than order conditions be improved, however, as Krugman notes, Trump’s only intervention has been anything but helpful. He’s ordered, for example, “that the Navy construct a whole new class of ships, Trump-class battleships, which are useless and would be sitting ducks.” Then, he demanded that the Navy “replace modern catapults with steam catapults, which he thinks are cooler,” and that they “relocate the command tower on aircraft carriers because he wants them to look more like the way they looked during World War II.”
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“The idea that the president is imposing his personal aesthetic preferences to undo design decisions that were made by military professionals is…incredible,” says Krugman. “I think these military failings should be put in the same context as the frantic and disastrous destruction and redesign of Washington, D.C. The demolition of the East Wing. The disastrous attempt to refurbish the Reflecting Pool to reflect Trump’s aesthetics. Even the gold leaf and gold lettering that is polluting the White House. All of this is really part of the same picture. So what is going on here?”
Krugman’s assessment is grim. In his estimation, “Obviously we have a seriously mentally ill, mentally deficient guy with his finger on the button. The president of the United States is clearly dissociating. I’ve been calling it ‘sundowning’ because I personally saw sundowning during my father’s awful last year. Trump is not in full possession of his faculties, and he is obsessing about things that are really just kind of remnant ego trips. I haven’t read the Haberman book yet, but reportedly he spends a large fraction of his time and probably a larger fraction of his mental energy on his redecoration projects, which aside from all being carried out disastrously, are also in incredibly bad taste. But this is where he is. He’s actually more interested in his giant, tacky, gilded ballroom than he is in the fate of the nation.”
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