Republican Senator Bob Corker Says Trump’s Recklessness Threatens ‘World War III’

Jonathan Martin and Mark Landleroct, reporting for The New York Times:

Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged in an interview on Sunday that President Trump was treating his office like “a reality show,” with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.”

In an extraordinary rebuke of a president of his own party, Mr. Corker said he was alarmed about a president who acts “like he’s doing ‘The Apprentice’ or something.”

“He concerns me,” Mr. Corker added. “He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.” […]

All but inviting his colleagues to join him in speaking out about the president, Mr. Corker said his concerns about Mr. Trump were shared by nearly every Senate Republican.

“Look, except for a few people, the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here,” he said, adding that “of course they understand the volatility that we’re dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes by people around him to keep him in the middle of the road.”

Even Republicans are now saying, on the record, what has been obvious all along: Trump is mentally unfit for the job — an impulsive, angry, uninformed narcissist with a tenuous hold on reality who is a menace to the nation and the world.

Contrary to Trump’s (and his followers’) incessant bleating, the news media is in fact profoundly biased for Trump by pretending he’s mentally competent. The narrative as presented on the front pages of our major newspapers is that we’re still within the bounds of normalcy: Republicans holding both houses of Congress and the White House, but unable to advance any significant legislation because of conflicts within the party.

The real story is that we’ve elected a dangerous man mentally unfit for office — quite possibly both mentally ill (narcissistic personality disorder) and suffering from the early stages of dementia — and the only people who can do something about it are the members of his own party, who refuse to do so out of fear of angering those in the electorate who for whatever reason still support Trump.

I don’t agree with Bob Corker on politics, but I admire and thank him for breaking the seal on speaking openly of Trump as mentally unfit. If Democrats say it, it can be spun as politics. When Republicans say, there’s nothing to spin.

★ Monday, 9 October 2017