Donald Trump is preaching a rash rhetoric of bizarre claims and lies - unqualified to lead

Donald Trump was always unfit to be president, however his apparent cognitive decline since he last ran for office in 2020, is alarming. Echo opinion published in the Yakima Herald-Republic news in Washington state. (A Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial)

He has long spewed lies and conspiracies, but Trump’s rantings have become more delusional — underscoring how he can’t be trusted with the nation’s nuclear launch codes, let alone to manage budgets, unpredictable crises or delicate matters of foreign affairs.

If elected again, his detachment from reality poses a threat to the stability of the country and the free world.

Trump is stuck in a dark place, making it impossible to lead the nation to a brighter future. His fear and anger routine feels especially tired next to Vice President Kamala Harris’ vision of joy and hope. Indeed, the growing wave of enthusiastic support for Harris has seemingly knocked Trump loose of his moorings.

Donald Trump Quotes That Are Completely Ridiculous

In recent weeks, he has significantly reduced his campaign schedule and retreated to his Palm Beach resort, where he gave a rambling news conference that was unglued even by Trumpian standards. With no supporting facts, he claimed the stock market was crashing, that the country was on the brink of a depression, and World War III was looming.

Trump made a number of bizarre claims, including that people were “dying financially because they can’t buy bacon” and that Governor Tim Walz, Vice-PresidentHarris’ presidential vice presidential pick, was “heavy into the transgender world.”

Trump wrongly said everyone would be forced to buy electric cars, and that would require every bridge in the country to be rebuilt because the weight of the batteries made electric vehicles heavier.

He went off on a wild tangent about the time he almost crashed in a helicopter with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, even though Brown says he never flew with Trump.

Contrary to what polls show, Trump said the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was something “every Democrat and every Republican wanted done.” He incoherently said gasoline was “going up $7, $8, $9 a barrel” although gas is sold by the gallon.

Trump repeatedly overstated crowd sizes at his rallies. At one point, he falsely claimed more people attended his speech on January 6, 2021, than the estimated 250,000 who watched the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

Washington DC August 28, 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. delivered "I Have a Dream" during the March on washington. 

By the time the news conference ended, Trump issued 162 misstatements, exaggerations or flat out lies in just over an hour, according to a review of the transcript by a team of reporters and editors at NPR. The full transcript is worth perusing to fully contemplate how Trump could be president again — or how a Fox News anchor could describe his performance as a “clear eyed and sober assessment of the state of the nation.” 

Days later, Trump took to social media to claim the massive crowds turning out for Harris and Walz were fake and had been generated by artificial intelligence. His wacky post makes QAnon conspiracy believers seem cogent.

“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport?” Trump wrote. “There was nobody at the plane and she ‘A.I.’d it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DON’T EXIST!”

The election is fast approaching, and this is the nonsense Trump is obsessed about. For the record, video footage and photographs captured by the media and attendees showed large crowds greeting Harris.

Trump, a twice impeached, convicted felon, facing three criminal indictments, went on to argue that Harris “should be disqualified” from running for president because the (not) fake crowd image was election interference.

Such drivel may be chalked up to Trump giving the MAGA masses more bread and circuses. But it is more troubling than that, as Trump is once again undermining democracy by recklessly sowing seeds of doubt in the upcoming election.




During recent rallies, Trump has gone on incoherent rants about sharks and electric boats. He has an odd obsession with fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter.

At a rally in Montana, Trump strangely said no one knows Harris’ last name. Uh, it’s Harris, just like her father, the retired Stanford University economics professor.

On several occasions, Trump has conflated mental asylums with asylum seekers. During a rally in the Bronx, he gave a head-scratching soliloquy about how he puts on his pants. He even claimed President Joe Biden would crash the Democratic National Convention and take back the nomination.

This is way beyond weird and has nothing to do with policies or plans to improve the lives of working Americans. Still, most Republican officials and many in the media ignore or downplay Trump’s peculiar state of mind.

He did the same thing in 2020. Even after losing more than 60 court cases and having his own Homeland Security officials declare the election was the most secure in history, Trump refused to concede and illegally attempted to overturn the results, which culminated in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Trump’s recent meltdowns are part of his broader deterioration. He frequently slurs words, forgets names, and confuses elected officials.

This is not a new issue, but it appears to be getting worse. In 2019, Trump called Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tim Apple. In 2020, he repeatedly referred to Rep. Matt Gaetz as Rick Gates, a former aide who was convicted for his role in the Russian election interference case. More recently, Trump mixed up Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi.

During recent rallies, Trump has gone on incoherent rants about sharks and electric boats. He has an odd obsession with fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter.

At a rally in Montana, Trump strangely said no one knows Harris’ last name. Uh, it’s Harris, just like her father, the retired Stanford University economics professor.

On several occasions, Trump has conflated mental asylums with asylum seekers. During a rally in the Bronx, he gave a head-scratching soliloquy about how he puts on his pants. He even claimed President Joe Biden would crash the Democratic National Convention and take back the nomination.

This is way beyond weird and has nothing to do with policies or plans to improve the lives of working Americans. Still, most Republican officials and many in the media ignore or downplay Trump’s peculiar state of mind.

Normalizing Trump’s unhinged musings is dangerous, and the kid-glove treatment stands in stark contrast to the onslaught Biden endured from the media, Democratic officials, and donors following his lousy debate performance.

Biden’s issues centered more on his speech, stemming from his lifelong struggle with stuttering. During the debate, he looked at Trump with his mouth agape and occasionally lost his train of thought and froze up, adding to the ⏰💥 alarm.

Trump, on the other hand, struggles to form coherent sentences, mispronounces words, and goes off on nonsensical tangents that are detached from reality. His incessant lies border on pathological. He also exhibits a grandiose sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, and a constant need for attention and admiration that can impair leaders who are so deeply focused on themselves.

President Biden wisely put the country ahead of his personal ambition and stepped aside. That leaves Trump, 78, as the oldest presidential nominee in American history. His advanced age is not the only red flag.

In 2017, more than two dozen concerned psychiatrists and mental health professionals warned about Trump’s instability in a book titled The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. And more recently, medical experts have expressed concern about Trump’s mental capacity with one psychologist saying his speech, memory recall, and other behavior shows he is “dangerously demented.”

It should be noted, however, that those assertions are a violation of the American Psychiatric Association’s so-called “Goldwater Rule,” which prohibits mental health experts from offering “professional opinions about the mental state of individuals that they have not personally and thoroughly evaluated.”

For his part, Trump claims that he “aced” a cognitive test, though mental health experts note that it is hardly an effective diagnostic tool.

And it’s unlikely that the former president would ever feel compelled to release more details about his mental state.

So it will ultimately be left to voters to determine whether Trump’s outlandish ravings are the product of “a very stable genius,” or someone who is more dangerous, more delusional, and more unfit to be president with each passing day.

Calling on American youth to improve our national human condition

Keep marching, children- So, here it is, in 2023, and thousands of students across the nation, including in Uvalde, Texas, walked out of schools protesting gun violence, and the callousness and cowardice of lawmakers who do little- and outright refuse- to stop it.

In the Virginia State Capitol Building, a beautiful bronze and marble sculpture of Barbara Johns. In 1951, she and other students led a strike to protest the conditions at their racially segregated school.

Echo history opinion by Cary Clack published in the San Antonio Express-News:  

But let's begin in 1951:  

It’s 1951 and R.R. Moton High School is a dump.

Pre-Brown v. Board of Education, the Black high school in Farmville, Virginia., is evidence that separate isn’t equal. 

All while the white high school across town, Farmville High, has all the resources needed for the education and comfort of its students, but on rainy days at Moton, students used umbrellas to keep dry in classrooms because of the porous roofs.

On April 23, 1951, the principal of Moton High receives a phone call that two of his students are going to be arrested at the bus station, so he leaves to go help them.

It’s a trick, and in his absence a note written in his name is sent to each of the classrooms calling for everyone to gather for a general assembly. Not knowing their reason for gathering, the 450 students and 25 teachers wait for their principal to explain.

But when the curtain opens, standing on stage isn’t the principal but Barbara Johns, a 16-year-old junior, who had manipulated the principal’s absence so she could call on the student body to protest the second-class conditions of their school. 

Barbara Johns (1935-1991)

She asks, then demands, the teachers to leave the auditorium. Those who don’t are politely escorted out by students.

Moton High lacks, among other things, a cafeteria, lockers, a science lab, a gym, and an infirmary. Johns tells her fellow students that since their parents and other Black adults haven’t been listened to by the white establishment, it’s time for the Black students to act.

She called for a strike and leads all the students on a march out of school to the county courthouse and into the offices of the school superintendent. All day, the students demanded better schools.

When their demands are rebuffed, Johns reaches out to NAACP lawyers. In a mass rally, the lawyers warn Farmville’s Black community of the dangers involved with filing a lawsuit, but the students respond that there aren’t enough jails to hold them.

Over the next few months, Johns is harassed. The Ku Klux Klan burns a cross in her family’s front yard. Fearing for their daughter’s safety, Johns’ parents send her to Montgomery, Alabama., to live with her uncle, Rev. Vernon Johns, pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

Now it’s 1963, and the man who succeeded Vernon Johns at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Martin Luther King Jr., is leading a civil rights campaign in Birmingham to desegregate public facilities. King spends Easter weekend in jail. After his release, protests continue but the campaign isn’t capturing the nation’s attention.

That changed on May 2, when Black youth, more than 1,000 and some as young as 6, poured out of 16th Street Baptist Church singing freedom songs. Police used paddy wagons, squad cars and buses to ferry the children to jail. The next day, when another thousand-plus students rolled out of church and down the street, Bull Connor ordered high pressure water hoses, dogs and batons be turned on them.

Birmingham now has the attention of the world.

It’s 2023, and last Wednesday, and thousands of students across the nation, including in Uvalde, walked out of school protesting gun violence and the callousness and cowardice of lawmakers who do little to stop it.

One of the Uvalde students was Jazmin Cazares, a senior at Uvalde High School. Her 9-year-old sister, Jacklyn, was one of the 21 people murdered at Robb Elementary. 

Jazmin was part of what she described on Twitter as a 77-minute sit-in, explaining, “That’s how long it took for police to enter rooms 111 and 112 at Robb Elementary.”

Students have been marching with urgency since the 2018, school shooting in Parkland, Florida., stole 17 lives. The name of the student-led movement arising from that massacre, “March for Our Lives” is an indictment of a nation whose leaders leave children with no option but to march for their lives.

Their marching and activism make many uncomfortable because marching and activism always makes people uncomfortable. Nonviolent protest is supposed to make people uncomfortable.

While imprisoned in Birmingham, Easter weekend, 60 years ago, Dr. King began composing his classic, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” as a response to clergy critical of him and the protests.

“You may well ask,” King wrote, “‘Why direct action, why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?’ You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”

And it worked.

Because of Barbara Johns and her schoolmates, their lawsuit was one of the five cases of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that separate wasn’t equal. 

A statue of Barbara Johns will replace that of Robert E. Lee in the U.S. Capitol.

Because of children marching in Birmingham, city leaders and business owners desegregated public facilities.

There is a direct line between Barbara Johns’ generation and Jazmin Cazares’ generation.

So, walk together children. Don’t you get weary.

Maine Writer calls on American youth to rally our recalcitrant policy leaders and champion a movement to improve our national human condition.