#senility

Trump’s rambling, unscripted, incoherent speech today was truly indicative of senility.

Trump's stupidity and narcissism shift into overdrive

August 14, 2025

Robert B. Hubbell

Trump's stupidity and narcissism shifted into overdrive on Wednesday. Does observing that fact matter to our efforts to defend and reclaim democracy? Yes. We have long ago learned that there is no “Rubicon” that will mark the definitive turning point against Trump. But we also learned in 2018 and 2020 that Trump alienates Independents and enough of his supporters to make a difference in election outcomes.

He alienates swing voters by taking positions and actions that are just too stupid for words. And yet, we have the burden of putting that stupidity into words so that we can remind swing voters (again) that Trump and his enablers are unfit to run the federal government.

In this newsletter, I will focus on three stories that highlight the heights (depths?) of Trump's idiocy and incompetence. Tell a friend.

Trump claims that invalidating his tariffs will lead to a 1929-style “great depression.”

You can’t make this up.

Trump has collected more than $100 billion in illegal tariffs in 2025 from American businesses (not foreign countries)

Trump’s tariffs were declared illegal by the US Court of International Trade in a ruling in May that is now on appeal before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

Trump is now arguing that if the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals declares the tariffs to be illegal, such a ruling “could lead to a 1929-style result . . . people would be forced from their homes, millions of jobs would be eliminated, hard-working Americans would lose their savings, and even Social Security and Medicare could be threatened.”

Wait, what?

Trump collects illegal taxes from American businesses and then argues that refunding those taxes to those same businesses would lead to another Great Depression.

Why would returning illegal taxes result in a Great Depression? Answer: It won’t.

More importantly, how stupid does Trump believe the judges on the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals are?

Even more importantly, if the government attorneys making that ludicrous argument actually believe it to be true, how did they pass the bar exam, or even dress themselves this morning?

The short answer to all of the above is that lawyers in the Department of Justice have stooped to “cutting and pasting” Trump's incoherent ramblings from Truth Social into a letter brief to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. See MSNBC, Trump’s DOJ warns of another Great Depression in court filing to save tariffs.

Per MSNBC,

On Monday, the Justice Department basically copied and pasted a hysterical plea from Donald Trump’s Truth Social account, in which the president claimed the country would experience another Great Depression if the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit confirms and enforces a May decision from a Court of International Trade panel that found many of Trump’s tariffs on foreign countries were illegal. Judges at the appeals court have already expressed skepticism about the Trump administration’s arguments.

The letter brief was signed by one of Trump's former criminal defense attorneys, John Sauer, who is now the Solicitor General of the United States.

Sauer wrote,

These deals for trillions of dollars have been reached, and other countries have committed to pay massive sums of money. If the United States were forced to unwind these historic agreements, the President believes that a forced dissolution of the agreements could lead to a 1929-style result. In such a scenario, people would be forced from their homes, millions of jobs would be eliminated, hard-working Americans would lose their savings, and even Social Security and Medicare could be threatened.

It is difficult to express how stupid this argument is. If the tariffs are invalidated, the illegally collected funds would be pumped back into the economy by refunding the money to American businesses. It is Republican orthodoxy that allowing companies to keep their money rather than giving it to the government is the road to prosperity and growth for the American economy. Trump (through John Sauer) now says that allowing companies to avoid US tariffs will cause another Great Depression.

John Sauer is a smart guy. Duke University. Harvard Law. Rhodes Scholar. He knows that the letter he submitted to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals is garbage. If he has an ounce of self-respect left in his rapidly evaporating reservoir of dignity and pride, he is probably silently sobbing into his pillow tonight, wondering how he ever allowed himself to throw away such a promising career.