USA Africa Dialogue Series - STAR QUESTION: ‘Is Donald Trump plain crazy?’ Big-name writers now questioning GOP nominee’s sanity

1.  'Is Donald Trump plain crazy?' Big-name writers now questioning GOP nominee's sanity - D. Stableford (Yahoo.com)

2.  Runaway Trump Train Picks Up Speed As Aides Can't Grab The Controls - Howard Fineman, S.V. Date (HuffingtonPost.com)

My People:

The answer is "Yep - not like a fox, but simply crazy" - and I don't even have to examine him at close quarters.

The more important question: is America crazy even to allow a situation where this kind of question is asked about a presidential candidate of a major political party?  What has the USA turned to?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Bolaji Aluko

Shaking his head

Violently

https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-sanity-mental-health-000000384.html

'Is Donald Trump plain crazy?' Big-name writers now questioning GOP nominee's sanity

Dylan Stableford

Senior editor

August 2, 2016

Is Donald Trump insane?

That's the question being asked in recent days by prominent columnists, both liberal and conservative, about the Republican presidential nominee.

"During the primary season, as Donald Trump's bizarre outbursts helped him crush the competition, I thought he was being crazy like a fox," Eugene Robinson wrote in an op-ed ("Is Donald Trump just plain crazy?") publishedTuesday in the Washington Post.

"Now I am increasingly convinced that he's just plain crazy," 

Robinson continued. "I'm serious about that. Leave aside for the moment Trump's policies, which in my opinion range from the unconstitutional to the un-American to the potentially catastrophic. At this point, it would be irresponsible to ignore the fact that Trump's grasp on reality appears to be tenuous at best."

Robinson was not the only newspaper writer to recently ask such a blunt question about Trump's fitness for office.

"One wonders if Republican leaders have begun to realize that they may have hitched their fate and the fate of their party to a man with a disordered personality," Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a separate Washington Post editorial on Monday. "We can leave it to the professionals to determine exactly what to call it. Suffice to say that Donald Trump's response to the assorted speakers at the Democratic National Convention has not been rational."

Vox founder Ezra Klein made a similar observation following Trump's press conference the day after last month's Republican National Convention. Instead of focusing on a unifying message, Trump resurfaced the debunked conspiracy theory that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's father was linked to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

"Have we stopped to appreciate how crazy Donald Trump has gotten recently?" Klein asked.

"There was no reason for Trump to say any of this," Klein wrote. "Trump had just accepted the Republican Party's nomination for president. Cruz had been vanquished, booed off the stage. 

Trump's opponent, now, was Hillary Clinton. But he couldn't help himself. He couldn't stay on message, he couldn't suppress the crazy, for 24 hours."

"Yes, Donald Trump is crazy," Steven Hayes added last week in the conservative Weekly Standard. "And, yes, the Republican party owns his insanity."

"I almost don't blame Trump," David Brooks wrote in the New York Times on July 29. "He is a morally untethered, spiritually vacuous man who appears haunted by multiple personality disorders. It is the 'sane' and 'reasonable' Republicans who deserve the shame."

It's not just op-ed columnists questioning Trump's sanity.

At last week's Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsed Hillary Clinton while suggesting his fellow billionaire is not of sound mind.

"Let's elect a sane, competent person," Bloomberg said.

Another billionaire, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, also questioned Trump's sanity.

"Donald initially — I really hoped he would be something different, that as a businessperson, I thought there was an opportunity there," Cuban told CNN while campaigning with Clinton in his hometown of Pittsburgh on Saturday. "But then he went off the reservation and went bats*** crazy."

"We can gloss over it, laugh about it, analyze it," Stuart Stevens, chief strategist to Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign, wrote on Twitter. "But Donald Trump is not a well man."

Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio, though, argues that Trump is not crazy but instead "sees the world as a constant struggle for victory and lacks a moral compass."

"The word 'crazy' conjures up a person who is so plagued by delusions, or perhaps hallucinations, that he makes no sense at all," D'Antonio wrote in an op-ed for CNN.com. "Consider his success, both before and during his pursuit of the presidency, and it's hard to argue that Trump suffers from such a profoundly distorted view of reality. In fact he has long demonstrated a keen awareness of how our society worships celebrity and rewards those who can attract the limelight and hold its focus."

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But when the Toronto Star asked about the recent onslaught of questions surrounding his mental health, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks referred him to the candidate's medical report.

"I'm sure you saw Mr. Trump's medical report released in December of last year, which described him as perhaps the healthiest individual to ever be elected President," Hicks wrote in an email to the paper. "I refer you to that."

But as the Star's Daniel Dale noted, that report addressed physical — and not mental — health.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/runaway-trump-unmanageable_us_57a15f8de4b08a8e8b600c89?2qjz1j30qqjvsfw29&

Runaway Trump Train Picks Up Speed As Aides Can't Grab The Controls

Paul Manafort isn't quitting, but is said to be "frustrated." The RNC is distancing itself. Even Trump's kids seem powerless.

 08/03/2016 12:29 am ET | Updated 29 minutes ago

Howard Fineman Global Editorial Director, The Huffington Post

S.V. Date Senior Political Correspondent, The Huffington Post

WASHINGTON ― Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's campaign chairman, has had success dealing with hard-to-manage dictatorial types, from Imelda Marcos of the Philippines, to Jonas Savimbi of Angola, to Victor Yanukovych of Ukraine.

But he is described by close friends as "frustrated" beyond measure by his inability to manage Trump in any sense.

Reince Preibus, the pliable chair of the Republican National Committee, went to extraordinary lengths to legitimize The Donald ― but now the RNC is throwing up its hands and distancing itself.

Even longtime Trump friends ― he does have as few, such as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani ― shake their heads at what they regard as his self-destructive knack for saying awful things at the worst times.

And insiders say Trump's children ― said to be a moderating influence at times ― have neither the political knowledge nor the clout with their dad to restrain him, assuming that they indeed wanted to.

In all, the world of Republican operatives, insiders and elected officials has concluded ― rather too late in the game ― that Trump is an unmanageable mess who can only win the presidency if Julian Assange, Vladimir Putin or a prosecutor somewhere destroys Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

"This election is going to be decided by outside events," said a patient but perhaps overly optimistic Trump adviser. "If, that is, we can figure out how to get the candidate to use them."

In a text to The Huffington Post, Manafort flatly denied the essence of a tweet by respected CNBC and New York Times reporter John Harwood ― that he had given up on the campaign ― and said campaign spokesman Jason Miller would soon release a statement. Miller, a few minutes later, tweeted: 

 

But Manafort's friends and allies confirmed that he is "frustrated" by Trump's refusal to seek advice ― or listen to it if offered ― as he sends out cascades of disastrous tweets and Facebook posts.

"The problem is that Trump watches TV every minute that he isn't actually on his phone, either talking or tweeting," said one adviser. "And then he gets angry at what he sees on TV and reacts.

"But I don't think Manafort will quit," the adviser said. "He's come too far for too long in this business to stop now, no matter how frustrating. There is nothing Paul can do."

Another member of Manafort's circle described Trump in unflattering terms and said that while Manafort was there for the duration, he was counting the days.

In effect, Manafort's allies are distancing their friend from the mess he is part of.

According to sources close to the campaign, it took longtime buddies Giuliani andTom Barrack to convince Trump to stop his attacks on the Gold Star Khan family.

The same distancing is going on at the RNC.

Priebus' response to Trump's feud with the Khan family, for example, was to state on CNN: "I think this family should be off limits."

And Tuesday, in response to a Huffington Post query about Trump's statements questioning the legitimacy of the country's elections, the committee suggested posing the question to Trump's campaign, instead. "I would ask the campaign to clarify what they mean," said RNC spokeswoman Lindsay Walters.

Trump's post-convention bender has put his party leadership in a nearly impossible situation. For weeks before Cleveland, Republican National Committee officials pushed the idea that Trump would unify the party at the convention and come out ready to take on Clinton.

But after a rocky convention that included a prime-time speech from a rival who refused to endorse Trump and his own wife's plagiarized remarks, party officials were privately explaining the difficulties in dealing with their nominee.

Trump does not take well to criticism, one official said, so any critique has to be prefaced with lavish praise ― as if dealing with a child.

One RNC member told The Huffington Post on condition of anonymity that Priebus routinely tells members that he frequently must "talk Trump down from a ledge," and that the campaign would be in even worse shape if he didn't.

Another RNC member could only offer: "What do you want us to say?"

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