AMONG THE REALITY-BASED COMMUNITY—those of us who acknowledge Donald Trump’s prodigious history of false statements—there’s a longstanding debate. Some think Trump knows better and is simply lying. Others think
he’s sincerely delusional.

Trump’s latest sitdown interview, taped on Sunday with Bret Baier and
aired at length by Fox News on Monday, strongly supports the
delusionality theory. And that’s bad news for America and the world.

For years, the lie/delusion debate has centered on the 2020 election.
Does Trump really think he won it, or does he know his tales of massive
fraud are bogus?

Trumppa leveled similar allegations of fraud and conspiracy against the
U.S. Agency for International Development, which he’s trying to shut
down. “It’s a scam. It’s a fraud, a lot of it, most of it,” he told Baier, offering no evidence for such a broad statement. “The whole thing
is a giant fraud.”

Trump didn’t just claim that Elon Musk’s DOGE bros were finding wasteful spending. He suggested, again without evidence, that they were finding
vast hidden corruption. “Nobody thought this would be caught,” he told Baier.

If Trump were just cynically spreading conspiracy theories—first about
the 2020 election, then about USAID and other parts of the
government—then he might be able, apart from these deceptions, to govern rationally. But the interview showed that on fundamental policy
questions, Trump is similarly detached from reality.

On the budget and the national debt, for example, Baier asked: “If you don’t want to cut entitlements, and you do want to add to defense
spending, and you want to eliminate taxes on tips, and you want to make
the 2017 tax cuts permanent, that’s a lot of money.”

Trump batted this problem aside. “But we’re going to take in tremendous amounts of money on tariffs,” he explained.

Everyone who understands economics knows this answer is nuts. Tariffs
don’t magically bring in money from other countries. They increase
government revenue by adding to the tax burden on American consumers.
They also constrict income from trade and usually spark retaliatory
tariffs, damaging the economy and, in turn, reducing the revenue the
tariffs bring in.

If Trump were just lying about the tariffs—if he didn’t really believe
in his illiterate version of economics—he wouldn’t be imposing them already. But he is imposing them.

Likewise, many people thought Trump wasn’t serious when he suggested a
week ago that the United States would evacuate Palestinians from Gaza
and “take over” the territory. Since then, however, he has continued to repeat his proposal. In the Fox interview, he filled in some details.

Baier asked: “Would the Palestinians have the right to return?” “No,
they wouldn’t,” said Trump.

Would the United States send troops to guard the territory? “No, Israel
will watch it,” said Trump.

Trump’s magical idea, in short, is that Palestinians will voluntarily
abandon Palestine—forever—and hand it over to Israeli troops. This would leave Trump with his fantasy: a land empty of people and ripe for
financial exploitation.

If Trump were just spinning an idle fantasy about an empty Gaza, he
would avoid American commitments. Instead, he went all in. “I would own
this. Think of it as a real estate development,” he told Baier. Under
the plan, Trump declared, “The United States owns the Gaza Strip.”

THIS ISN’T THE WAY YOU TALK if you’re just a liar. You don’t threaten
and needlessly infuriate your neighbors and allies. You don’t bet your country’s economy on trade wars. You don’t double down on
ethnic-cleansing fantasies involving massive American financial
commitments, much less “ownership.”

It’s time to face what the Canadians have faced: Trump isn’t kidding. He really believes this lunacy. He’s deranged.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/donald-trump-delusional-fox-news-interview-lies-gaza-tariffs-canada-usaid

Yep.

--
“We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him. We shouldn’t have listened to him, and we can’t let that happen ever again”.
-- Nikki Haley

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