What’s left of Donald Trump’s brain has turned to jello

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The only thing Donald Trump ever really seemed to enjoy about politics was giving rally speeches to his fawning base. Yet in the year-plus since he left office, his handlers have rarely allowed him to appear in public. When he does occasionally speak publicly, it serves as a reminder of why his people mostly keep him hidden: his cognitive abilities keep slipping further.

On Sunday, Trump gave a speech to donors, and let’s just say that it didn’t go so well. Trump suggested that the United States take F-22 fighter jets, put a Chinese flag on them, and “bomb the shit” out of Russia. Trump then theorized that this would cause Russia to blame China, and the two of them would engage in a war while the U.S. benefited.

This is the kind of idea that a child would think was viable, and that’s putting it charitably. In Trump’s imagination, Russia would be fooled by slapping a foreign flag on a fighter jet that’s widely known to be an American jet? And if China and Russia engaged in an all out war, which would presumably turn nuclear, this would somehow be a good thing for the United States?

What’s left of Donald Trump’s brain has turned to jello. There’s basically nothing there. This has left Trump and his handlers trying to walk an increasingly difficult tightrope. In order to keep the donations coming in, Trump and his handlers have to keep up the illusion that he’s somehow going to be a viable 2024 candidate, so they have to keep periodically putting Trump out there in front of donors. But if they put Trump out there often enough, everyone is going to figure out that an increasingly vacant Trump isn’t going to be running for anything by 2024, and the donations will dry up.

So we keep seeing more of these increasingly humiliating moments for Trump, where he’s presumably given a script to follow, but doesn’t understand why he’s supposed to stick to it, so he wanders off script and gives away to yet another audience that there’s nothing left between his ears. How much longer can Trump and his people keep up the illusion that he has any remaining viability left?

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