Donald Trump is a very sick man

Aug 02, 2026

At 9:23 this morning, the White House abruptly dismissed the press traveling with the president of the United States while he was away for the weekend at his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. With the cameras now gone, just three hours later at 12:32 p.m., Donald Trump would share the first of 42 posts on Truth Social in a span of less than 3 hours and 15 minutes. The president’s public meltdown began when he posted his disappointment with one of his appointees, “I don’t know what she was thinking?” before he jumped straight into more delusional and dangerous images. Among the flood of posts, he shared an AI-generated image of himself kissing Jesus on a golden crucifix. He shared a “TRUMP 2028” campaign poster, a fake image of himself walking beside a handcuffed alien on a military base, and a renewed threat to invade Greenland.

He didn’t stop there. He posted a painting of himself as the commanding general, leading Revolutionary War soldiers into battle with his mouth open in a battle cry, while flames consumed the battlefield behind him, and a battered American flag flew overhead. This is how he sees himself. Not as a president spending the weekend at his golf course, but as a warrior king leading his nation into battle, one he would have never had the courage to actually fight in. That fantasy is not harmless, because right now he is leading us deeper into a real war where real people have died.

He also shared a fake image of his face merged with President George Washington’s, split straight down the middle, under the words “250 Years / In God We Trust.” It was a deliberate attempt to place himself alongside the founder of the American republic. Because he sees himself as his equal and inseparable from the nation itself. He’s saying he is Washington and he is the republic.

He posted a map of South America with Venezuela filled in as an American flag and labeled “51st State.” He shared an actual photograph of himself stepping out of a golf cart, hunched forward, a white USA hat in his hand, looking every single day of his eighty years, but with the caption “President Trump ages in reverse!”

Then there was the created image of himself as Elvis Presley in his iconic white rhinestone jumpsuit, with a deep V-neck and with his chest exposed, and a bald eagle embroidered across his heart. In it, Trump, masquerading as Elvis, stands in front of a microphone as though he is about to perform for a waiting crowd. And I couldn’t help but think about the irony of Trump choosing Elvis in this moment, knowing that he spent his final years overmedicated and isolated, surrounded by enablers who told him what he wanted to hear while his body and mind deteriorated. And how Elvis died alone in a bathroom at Graceland while the people closest to him pretended everything was fine. If Trump was trying to choose a metaphor for where he is right now, he could not have picked a more accurate one.

He just kept going. He posted an image of himself as a young man in a military school uniform, seated across a table from present-day Trump, with the caption “Same Guy. Even more energy now!” Present-day Trump is staring adorably at younger Trump. But what the image actually shows is the distance between who he was and who he has become. The young man in the uniform is upright, sharp, but not too far away from bone spurs and draft deferments. The man sitting across from him is eighty years old, and struggling. The fact that he felt compelled to post this, to insist publicly that nothing has changed, tells us everything about what he is afraid of. People who are fine do not need to prove they are fine. People who are declining do.

Trump’s distraction machine was on overdrive today, but none of these were without at least some truth. Like the creepy image of himself looming over a small Greenlandic village, peering down from the clouds, captioned “Hello, Greenland!” He has shared this one multiple times before, but we can’t dismiss it as just a distraction. It is a threat with real consequences. And when taken in the context of what he said just yesterday: that the United States will have “operational control” of Greenland before he leaves office, we have to believe he is serious. Denmark, a NATO ally whose territory Greenland is, has said no over and over again. The people of Greenland have said no. But accepting no to anything is not something Donald Trump is known for. The President of the United States posted an image of himself hovering over the homes of people of a sovereign nation, like a predator surveying prey, because he thinks the entire island and everyone on it already belongs to him. This is what Trump’s imperialist dreams look like.

The post that really set Donald Trump off this morning was one of his first of the day, when he attacked Jeanine Pirro, his own U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. This came after a late Friday motion to dismiss that Pirro had filed on the felony charge against David Hearn, the 67-year-old former Olympic canoeist who had been facing 10 years in prison for allegedly vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. For weeks, Trump and his administration had insisted the damage was caused by “radical left” vandals. Trump himself claimed someone had cut a 300-foot gash in the lining with a knife, and Pirro had held a press conference saying she had “tremendous evidence” and would prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

But when the Department of the Interior finally turned over its documents, the truth proved it was all a lie. The lining had begun peeling almost immediately after installation, and the damage was the result of a botched job by the contractor on a no-bid contract from one of Trump’s own people. Pirro admitted in her court filing that the evidence did not support the charge and she dropped the case.

And instead of accepting the truth from his own appointee, Trump went on Truth Social and wrote, “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM.” Then, at 12:51, he posted a video, insisting that the material was “being cut with a knife or a box cutter, for all to see!” His own prosecutor told a federal court under oath that the case was baseless, and he attacked her publicly for refusing to keep his lie alive.

That is what triggered everything that followed. When reality and the truth get too close, Donald Trump lashes out. Often on his personal social media platform, Truth Social.

Today was also the day that Trump Media launched “Truth API,” the paid data service that gives hedge funds and trading firms faster access to Trump’s posts before the general public sees them, for a very large fee. His company described it as providing “a direct, licensed, real-time feed of the platform’s most market-moving Truths.” Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff called it “an outrageous abuse of the President’s office for his personal benefit.” Senator Chuck Schumer called it “the definition of insider trading.” Even Republican Senator Bill Cassidy said it was “wrong” and “a form of buying access.” Jamie Raskin opened a formal congressional investigation. Trump holds over 40 percent of the company’s shares, and profits directly from every paid subscriber. He now makes money off the chaos he posts. The more erratic the posts, the more the markets move, and the more money he makes. His platform was struggling to be profitable, and he found a way to use the office of the presidency to enrich yet another one of his companies.

Nothing that happened today was surprising. But it is still dangerous and deeply troublesome. And his own people know it. Last week, The New York Times reported that his own aides have described him as “more erratic, even by Trumpian standards.” They said he has seemed “trapped,” his presidency consumed by a war he cannot find his way out of. He is “deeply frustrated,” unable to find a “face-saving” exit from a conflict that has dragged on for five months with no clear endgame.

This is not just about one man’s decline. This is about what it means for every person watching, including world leaders. Not just our adversaries, who are studying every crack for leverage, but our allies, too. The leaders who have to sit across from this man and negotiate to mitigate the damage he keeps creating. The ones who have to decide how they will keep the door open to the United States while protecting themselves and their countries, and the world at large, safe from a very unwell Donald Trump.

After all of the instability coming from the president today, he shared one last post (as of the time of writing this) at 10:05 tonight to announce that he is now calling off a military strike on Iran. He wrote that the U.S. is “locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II.” He said Iran and other Middle Eastern countries had asked him to hold off the attack because “the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.” He said he agreed, “for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL.” And he closed with the same attention-seeking sign-off he is known for: “Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Whether this actually results in any sort of resolution to the war that he started or not, we will have to wait and see. But one thing is for certain: the man who posted that the war is on hold is the same man, just hours earlier, who was posting himself as Elvis, kissing Jesus and walking with aliens. Now he is announcing a decision that affects our military families, our allies, the oil and stock markets, and every human life in the path of this war. That is who is making all of these decisions.

I have been writing about Donald Trump nearly every night for over a year and a half. And looking back over it all, what I see is a man who never once took his job seriously. Not for a single day. It has been nonstop stunts and spectacles at the expense of the American people and the world. But what I also see is a man who is getting worse, physically and mentally. The posting rampages are not just bizarre, and his fantasies are not just strange. There are more of them, and they are becoming more elaborate, grandiose, and more disconnected from anything resembling the real world and what we are all living through. And the people around him, who could stop this all today, are not even trying. Instead, they are vultures looking for the best opportunity to benefit both with increased power and profit.

I wake up every morning wondering what terrible thing the President of the United States will do and what I will have to write about that night. Some nights, I write the post and almost immediately forget everything I just published. I block it out temporarily so that I can sleep, and then it all comes crashing back to me when I wake up in the morning. And I know that so many of you feel the same thing. That heaviness and dread. That feeling of watching something terrible happen in slow motion and not being able to look away because we all have to bear witness if we ever want to have a chance of stopping the destruction.

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?