The president has gone insane
At 8:03 this morning, Donald Trump began his fourth consecutive day hidden from public view, locked inside the White House, by posting one of the most disturbing and reckless messages any sitting president has ever posted for the world to see.
While so many across the country were preparing for a day centered around family, reflection, and renewal, the President of the United States was focused on something far more dangerous.
That is a direct quote from the President of the United States, posted on Easter Sunday morning, on a day sacred to Christians, during Passover, in the middle of a war he started, threatening to destroy the civilian infrastructure that 90 million people depend on to survive, while using completely unhinged language that no other world leader would think to use.
He is threatening power, water plants, and bridges, among other infrastructure that civilians depend on. The systems that keep hospitals running, water flowing, food distributed, and people alive. That is what he is threatening to destroy. And he signed it “Praise be to Allah,” using a phrase sacred to billions of Muslims to mock their faith on a threat of mass destruction and potentially unimaginable loss of life, on one of the holiest days on the Christian calendar. The Council on American-Islamic Relations called it “deranged mocking of Islam.” There is no religion on earth that would look at that post and see anything other than a man who has no reverence for anything beyond himself.
What Trump posted this morning is a threat to commit war crimes. Amnesty International’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard, called the threat “revolting” and said she was “running out of language to denounce and condemn” what is happening. She warned that Iranian civilians will be the first to suffer: “No heat, no electricity, no water, no capacity to move or to flee, and all that it means for their right to life.” And Amnesty International has laid out in detail exactly what happens when you destroy a country’s power grid: water pumping stations stop functioning, clean water becomes scarce, hospitals lose electricity, life support machines shut down, food production and distribution networks collapse, and businesses close. International law experts cited by NPR and PolitiFact have confirmed that deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure violates the Geneva Conventions and the protocols governing armed conflict. PolitiFact rated the war crimes assessment “Mostly True,” noting that the only reason prosecution is unlikely is that neither the United States nor Iran is a member of the International Criminal Court.
And the deadlines he keeps setting tell their own story. On April 4th, he posted that Iran had 48 hours, which would have been Monday. Today, he moved it to Tuesday. A few hours later, he narrowed it to Tuesday at 8 PM Eastern. He is negotiating with himself and losing every round. Iran is openly mocking him. The world is watching a man with the most powerful military on earth issue ultimatums, break them, reset them, and threaten mass destruction in between, while the country he is threatening refuses to flinch. This is not strength. This is a man spiraling in public, and the deadlines are the proof.
But between those shifting deadlines, in phone interviews today, he escalated in ways that tell the bigger picture. He is a danger to every person living on this planet. He told ABC News, “If it happens, it happens. And if it doesn’t, we’re blowing up the whole country.” He said ‘very little’ is off limits. He told The Hill he is not ruling out sending ground troops into Iran. He told Fox News he is “considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil.” This is a 79-year-old man with access to nuclear codes, talking about an entire country of 90 million people as if it were a building he’s decided to demolish. And what makes today different from every other day that has felt like the worst is that all of it happened at once. The profanity. The mocking of Islam on a threat of mass destruction. The war crimes laid out in plain language on social media. The shifting deadlines that even Iran won’t take seriously. I have written about dangerous moments before. But I have never seen a single morning where every element, the cruelty, the instability, the blasphemy, the indifference to human life, and the complete absence of any restraining force around him, converged like this. There is no one stopping him. And that is what I feel most today.
The President of the United States did not attend a single one of the three Easter services held at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square, the church known as the ‘Church of the Presidents,’ which has been attended by every president since its construction in 1816. Instead, according to pool reporters, he took a ‘ceremoniously slow’ motorcade tour around Memorial Circle, near the Arlington Memorial Bridge where he wants to build an arch honoring himself, and then stopped at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. On Easter morning, while families across the country were gathering in churches, the President of the United States was threatening to bomb a country, driving to his golf course, and calling in to Fox News for a 15-minute phone interview about his war. He didn’t go to church. He went to worship himself instead.
We are continuing to see the perversion of truth. The president says, does, and pretends to do one thing, and we can see it with our own eyes, and then his fixer team of wordsmiths tell us the opposite. Yesterday, April 4th, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung posted on X: “There has never been a President who has worked harder for the American people than President Trump. On this Easter weekend, he has been working nonstop in the White House and Oval Office. God Bless him.” That post got 2.4 million views. Today, Easter Sunday, Reuters photographer Nathan Howard captured Trump returning to the White House from his golf club and odd tour of DC. In the picture, you can see Trump, in his MAGA style white cap, shuffling slowly toward the entrance, looking every one of his 79 years. He looks diminished and artificially aged. He does not look like a man who has been working nonstop. He looks like a man who is not well. The communications director told us one thing. The camera told us the truth. And this comes after days of Trump being “unusually out of the public eye.” We deserve to know the truth about the condition of the man who holds the power to send our children to war and launch nuclear weapons.
And while our president was cursing on social media and driving to his golf course, the first American-born pope in history was standing on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, delivering his first Easter message to the world. Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, looked out at thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square and said something that could not have been more different from what came out of the White House this morning.
“Let those who have weapons lay them down. Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace. Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue. Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them.”
He warned against what he called an ever-increasing “globalization of indifference,” borrowing the phrase from Pope Francis, who delivered his final words to the world from that same balcony exactly one year ago. He said Easter’s victory was won not through force but through nonviolence, through trust and sacrifice and dialogue. Earlier this week, he told journalists he hoped Trump was “looking for an off-ramp.” And when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tried to frame this war in religious terms, as if God endorses bringing violence upon evildoers, Pope Leo made clear that this theology is dangerous and wrong.
Trump and his enablers are trying to turn this into a religious crusade, while one of the most respected religious leaders in the world, the Pope, was warning against it. Two men. Two messages on Easter morning. One called for peace, dialogue, and encounter. The other dropped an F-bomb and threatened to destroy a nation’s ability to keep its hospitals running.
And it wasn’t just Trump’s personal post. Multiple cabinet departments used their official government accounts to post explicitly Christian messages today. The Associated Press noted that while previous presidents have issued Easter statements, the overall tradition has been to honor the constitutional separation of church and state, and this administration went a step further than any before it, which is of the utmost importance because this country was built on the premise of freedom of religion and that separation. This country is home to many who practice different religions or no religion at all. And that matters because the government is not supposed to elevate one belief system above all others.
None of this is surprising. This is the same government mocking Islam in the president’s own words and using official federal channels to promote Christianity. That is not religious liberty. That is state-sponsored religion. And it is exactly the kind of thing the founders wrote the First Amendment to prevent.
Aside from Trump’s unforgivable messages, something else happened today. The cracks widened more than we have seen before.
Democratic lawmakers responded with a level of alarm that would have been unthinkable even a few months ago. Senators Chris Murphy, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, and Tim Kaine all condemned the post in explicit terms, with Murphy calling on Cabinet members to consult constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment and Sanders calling it “the ravings of a dangerous and mentally unbalanced individual.” Representatives Becca Balint, Yassamin Ansari, and Maxine Dexter followed, with Ansari’s call to invoke the 25th Amendment shared by the verified House Oversight Democrats account. What Balint said struck me most, because it named the thing so many of us have been thinking: “It is something that is such an indication to me that my Republican colleagues have accepted for themselves that there’s no bottom. They will continue to support this man regardless of how unhinged and unfit he is for office.”
But here is where it gets even more significant, because today it wasn’t only Democrats saying this.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, once one of Trump’s most loyal defenders before leaving Congress, posted this on X: “On Easter morning, this is what President Trump posted. Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness. I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit.” She went on: “I’m not defending Iran, but let’s be honest about all of this. The Strait is closed because the US and Israel started the unprovoked war against Iran based on the same nuclear lies they’ve been telling for decades.” She said “Our President is not a Christian and his words and actions should not be supported by Christians.” And she ended with this: “This is not making America great again, this is evil.”
That is Marjorie Taylor Greene. The woman who once followed him into every fight, who built her entire political identity around loyalty to Donald Trump, is now calling him insane, calling his administration complicit, and calling his actions evil. When you have lost Marjorie Taylor Greene on the question of whether you have gone too far, you are in a category of recklessness that has no modern precedent in American politics.
Ty Cobb, who served as White House counsel during Trump’s first term, said this week on national television that the president is “clearly insane” and questioned why the Cabinet has not invoked the 25th Amendment. “Given the fact that the Cabinet will not invoke the 25th Amendment for a man who is clearly insane,” Cobb said, “this war highlights that and these screeds that come out nightly at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m., it highlights the level of his insanity and depravity.” Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s own former White House Communications Director, called for his removal. Former Republican congressman Joe Walsh posted simply: “25th Amendment. Now.” Joe Kent, a former Trump ally who resigned from the administration in March specifically over the Iran war, urged his followers to contact the White House and their lawmakers to oppose sending ground troops. Scott McConnell, the co-founder of The American Conservative magazine, called on Vice President JD Vance to announce his support for a 25th Amendment transition, appoint a bipartisan vice president, and commit to not running in 2028. Mary Trump, the president’s own niece, wrote: “It’s not that Donald sent this as awful as it is; it’s that nobody felt they could stop him or, worse, nobody thought they should.”
Former White House correspondent John Harwood wrote: “The 25th Amendment was written for precisely this situation. Trump cannot think clearly. He cannot function effectively as president. Unfortunately, Republican Party leaders are weak, low-character people unwilling to even try acting honorably.”
The 25th Amendment was trending on X for most of the day, and on prediction markets, the probability of it being invoked has climbed significantly since the war began. These are not just words anymore. The people closest to this president, the people who built their careers defending him, are telling us he has lost control.
That is the weight of this day. And many of us felt it in our own homes. I was pouring coffee when I first saw the post this morning. I had gotten up early to get the house ready because my youngest daughter was having friends over. In our home, Easter is about family and friends. And the first thing I saw on my phone, standing in my kitchen with a coffee pot in my hand, was the President of the United States threatening mass destruction. And my first thought, before the anger, before the heartbreak, was the quiet hope that maybe someone in that building had told him to just be calm today. Just today. Just give us one day. Because later I would see that so many others had been thinking the exact same thing. Just give us one day where the president doesn’t do something dangerous or cruel. One day where we can sit with our families without checking our phones to see if he’s escalated a war. One day without the knot in our stomachs. But he can’t give us that. He won’t. Because this is what he does. He takes the moments that are supposed to belong to us, our holidays, our mornings, our peace, and he fills them with chaos and cruelty until there’s no room left for anything else. And our exhaustion is the strategy. They want us too tired to react. Too overwhelmed to organize. Too numb to feel the weight of what’s happening.
I turned on the news, hoping it would be taken seriously and shared as breaking news. And it was covered to some degree, but not in a serious enough way. Instead, it was treated like an everyday occurrence. Like the president was negotiating a normal moment of diplomacy. But what struck me in that moment was that the news had to blur the words the President used. They had to censor the President of the United States on Easter morning because what he said was not safe for viewers to see in its entirety.
I stood there and felt something I can only describe as heartbreak. A deep kind of pain that comes from frustration and helplessness. And then I immediately recognized the assault fatigue I was feeling from what we are all being subjected to. Because if any other president in the history of this country had posted what Donald Trump posted today, not even taking into account the religious significance of this weekend for those who celebrate, there would have been an instant and serious question about the president’s fitness. Emergency meetings. Wall-to-wall press coverage. Calls from both parties. Instead, the news blurred the words, treated it like strategy, and moved on to the next segment. And we absorbed it, because what choice do we have? Because there is always another moment of uncertainty and chaos coming, and we have been conditioned to expect it.
Today also marks one year since I shared that first resistance post on Facebook that quickly led to these nightly posts. I wasn’t a political commentator. I was a travel writer and family blogger for nearly two decades, who was so overwhelmed by what was happening in our government that I shut down for months after Trump won. I didn’t do anything online. I retreated back into my own world in a state of paralysis. And then randomly found myself near the “Hands Off” protest on April 5th, 2025. I saw people carrying signs and my daughter and I decided to follow them. It was the first rally I had ever been to. I came home and shared a picture of a sign to my then abandoned Facebook page that said everything I was feeling. That post reached thousands of people and reminded me that there were so many other people feeling just like I was and that we all have a place in this resistance. Travel writers, doctors, union workers, world leaders, stay at home moms, all of us.
Because when I thought back to one of my own favorite travel writers, Rick Steves, and how he has spoken out and used his voice in the resistance, I understood that there is no prerequisite for speaking out against a fascist takeover. As a travel writer, I knew that my job wasn’t just to share pretty places. It was to talk about the deeper histories of the places I visited, the stories underneath the scenery. And I realized that if he could use his travel platform to talk about what was happening, I could use mine to do the same. I didn’t intend to turn this into what it became. I didn’t anticipate spending all day, every single day, watching, researching, trying to understand the full picture of what’s happening to our country. But I am so thankful I did.
One year later, our community just keeps growing. Knowing that there are others that truly care about our country, and who want better for future generations is the reason I’m here today, doing this work. Documenting the fall of our 250-year experiment as a warning for the future. Or what I hold to be true: writing the story of her greatest comeback. I haven’t missed a single night. And your support and paid memberships have enabled me to do this full-time while keeping everything free for everyone. Not a single post is behind a paywall. Because I believe that the truth should always be free for all to read.
And maybe it’s time for a reminder about who I write these posts for. Because it’s not for the Trump loyalists. I’m writing them for us, for you and me, so we never forget our way and so that we’re armed with facts and not propaganda. These posts are our resistance. They’re not for them. They’re meant to remind us what it means to be an American and what our obligation is, not just to each other, but to the world. Most importantly, they are a reminder that none of this is normal, and we cannot ever let ourselves think it is.
Today, we saw a level of recklessness from Donald Trump I hoped we would never see. His danger to not just us, but the entire world, has reached a level where we truly are on the brink of something catastrophic. And as much as we might have believed there were rational minds still advising him, we have to accept that he’s not going to stop unless he is stopped through the 25th Amendment or impeachment.
We, as citizens of the United States, must come together in whatever ways we can and demand that J.D. Vance immediately invoke the 25th Amendment. At the same time, we must also demand that Congress, as a whole, start impeachment proceedings. It doesn’t matter that Republicans hold the majority. It doesn’t matter that Vance has shown no willingness to act. We have to normalize demanding both, loudly and without hesitation, because the alternative is accepting that no one will stop him. We are on borrowed time. We can no longer afford to wait for the midterm elections.
We are the ones creating history right now. And that history may include, for the first time ever, the use of impeachment or the 25th Amendment under circumstances like these. And even though this moment has never come before, history does tell us something else in this moment. Human beings have faced impossible moments before, and we are still here today. Time and time again, our ancestors faced darkness and uncertainty, and they pushed through. Each and every one of us is here because of that. We are survivors of struggles we will never fully understand. We just have to remember that strength and use everything we have to protect what still remains. And like those who came before us, we will get through this too. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the Day: Our dogs had their own Easter egg hunt today. It was a bit over the top, but they had the best time ever, and I wish we had thought to do this years ago.
Sources:
https://www.axios.com/2026/04/05/trump-iran-strait-hormuz-bombing-threat
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/05/nx-s1-5774368/iran-war-updates
https://time.com/article/2026/04/05/trump-power-plants-iran-hormuz/
https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-war-crimes
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-skips-church-on-christianitys-holiest-day-to-go-on-crazy-tour/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-triggers-25th-amendment-calls-with-unhinged-easter-meltdown/
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-cabinet-urged-invoke-25th-amendment-president-11785106
https://www.newsweek.com/jd-vance-urged-invoke-25th-amendment-against-donald-trump-11719212
https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-chances-of-being-removed-by-25th-amendment-climb-11785658
During Trump’s first term, psychiatrists predicted a “ psychotic break”with reality because of his “malignant narcissism.”
Since then, they have added “sadism and psychopathy” to the diagnosis. Dr. Bandy X. Lee—Yale Professor of Psychiatry, Forensic Psychiatrist with 20 years of practice treating incarcerated prisoners, and Editor of “The Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” with 54 mental health experts, has warned for months that Trump will lead America and the world into a “death spiral.”
It is time to impeach Trump for TREASON/Insurrection. When convicted,his administration also is convicted: Article II, Section 4.
This is a better solution than the open-ended 25th Amendment, which would allow his return. We all need CLOSURE.
Do you think he provoked Iran and Muslims all over the world so they would respond on our shores with violent acts of retribution, thus giving him grounds to cancel elections?