Trump Spent the Weekend Posting Truly Unhinged Stuff | Morning Shots

Bulwark Takes

Andrew Egger and Bill Kristol dissect Donald Trump's increasingly erratic social media behavior, including AI-generated maps and delusional

Key takeaways

• Trump's recent social media activity reflects a deepening delusion and psychological unraveling, with AI-generated maps and fantastical claims about territorial control.
• The hosts draw troubling parallels between Trump's behavior and Hitler's final days in the bunker, highlighting how unchecked power can lead to dangerous delusions.

Main topics

• Trump's social media delusions and AI-generated content
• Comparisons between Trump's behavior and historical authoritarian figures

Notable quotes

"He can do an unbelievable amount of damage in the bunker, so to speak."

Conclusion

Trump's increasingly unhinged social media behavior signals deeper psychological distress and a dangerous reliance

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Hello, everybody. Welcome to Morning Shots Live. It's Tuesday. It's the start of a week. Holidays are strange. We're all sort of scrambled and discombobulated, but we are lurching back into the news cycle with a scant, I believe, 56 days left to go until the midterm elections. Am I right about that, Bill? We're kind of in the in the homestretch now here. It's a it's it's a. two-month sprint to Judgment Day, or at least what we are increasingly confident and hopeful will be a certain kind of political judgment day for the president. And he is going about coping with that fact in all kinds of his own special ways. So we're going to talk about that in a little bit. Bill, how was your Labor Day, by the way? Did you? Speaker 4 (0:44) Eight weeks out, as you were saying, that's eight times seven, that's 56 days. So that's correct from last Tuesday. I don't know why you're anti three-day weekends on Tuesday. I think it's good for the week to begin on Tuesday. I was thinking about writing something maybe later this week in warning shots. Why aren't we going to a four-day week? Isn't that what a civilized country would do? I kind of enjoyed that three-day weekend, frankly, you know, so. I know you're young, Andrew. You missed work. You missed going into the office. You know, the kids at home, a little bit tiring, but some of us enjoyed that three-day weekend. Anyway, it's Speaker 1 (1:14) good Speaker 4 (1:14) to be back. It's a nice Labor Day weekend. And I hope everyone had a good Labor Day weekend. And I hope you had a better Labor Day weekend than Donald Trump, who seems to have spent the whole weekend unhappily posting insanity to social media, which I do think reflects. unhappiness on his part and some knowledge that things are not going well for him. Speaker 3 (1:33) Yeah, well, there's Speaker 4 (1:34) a Speaker 3 (1:34) whistling past the graveyard, I think, going by a little bit here. Let's get into this a little bit. The president, I mean, he has always been a crazy poster on Truth Social and on Twitter. The arrival of AI has seemingly warped his brain to a certain degree, and certainly his own diminishing political prospects just keep... pushing him further and further into this fantasy land where he is still the sort of the world striding colossus that he believes himself to be and that his base believes him to be. And that, you know, world leaders tremble when he walks past them and when his shadow falls on them. In the president's own postings, this is still the way that the world is. So let's just real quick go through a few of these things that he threw up on Truth Social over the weekend. We can do them in any order. Chris wants to put them on up there. We will talk about them. So this one's not AI. This is a real picture of happier times. The president and Hulk Hogan at the 2020, I believe the 2024 Madison Square Garden rally right before he won reelection. So, you know, big, strong man likes to likes to arm wrestle professional wrestlers and defeat them. This is the kind of alpha the president is. Let's just move through. quick. These ones, this is a little bit less real, a little less true to life. Donald Trump is not spending his time surveying the bombardment of Iranian vessels from the decks of U.S. aircraft carriers. But but that's the sort of image he is trying to project. Speaker 3 (2:56) And this one's more just gross. You know, this is this is basically what the trade war is all about. This is, of course, Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who he is, I guess, bullying in a hockey match type way, deriding as governor. This is the ongoing barb that Trump considers Canada the 51st state in many respects. And and of course, this trade war is not really about getting anything out of Canada economically, delivering anything for the American people. It's just Donald Trump trying to. push somebody around. So there was a bunch more. Other than this stuff, the president tweeted out a number of maps that were sort of ego flattering in one way or another. He had he had New Mexico with Mexico crossed out. And I guess he's pretending we're going to rename that state New America. He actually had seven different AI generated maps of of New Mexico, of New America that he that he sent out in rapid succession over the weekend. He had the Strait of Hormuz, which he was labeling an American territory. He had all of North America with the U.S. flag draped over it as though we are going to. colonize both Canada and Mexico. He just doesn't I mean, he doesn't seem to be doing very well, Bill. Speaker 4 (4:06) Yeah, no, I think if a friend of ours were doing this, we would honestly call that friend's spouse or parents or loved ones and say, can you get some help for this guy? And we joke about it in a way, and it is Trump being Trump and all that, but it's pretty bad. I mean, it is disturbing. He's president of the United States, and at best, he's indulging in extremely distasteful, stupid, foolish, counterproductive activities with these posts. And at worst, he's kind of lost it, right? So there's something really unhinged about this in a way that I don't think for all the stuff in the first term about, you know, his tweets and all, it was nothing like this. We're at a new level of unhingedness. Speaker 3 (4:47) Yeah, I just I just finished reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich last night, which dangerous, dangerous thing to do before, you know, for a political reporter or analyst to finish up a book like that and then be like, I've got some comparisons on the brain. I am really struck. I mean, there's a Hitler in the bunker element to all this stuff. Right. I mean, it's just as as the. the fantasy worlds that he has always seen in his mind and that he tried extremely hard to will onto reality and actually got further than people gave him any credit that, that, or certainly than, than a lot of people expected or hoped that he would get in terms of just, just bullying the world into the shape that he wanted it to be in. And then, you know, as it, as, as you lose momentum, as you lose ground, it all starts to crash down around your ears. The delusion, just the level of delusion, the level of grievance and sense of betrayal and all of these things. I mean, I do think there are some parallels, some parallels to be made. Of course, he has two more years of presidency. There's a lot of game left to play. We haven't even had these midterms yet. So maybe I will look back on this particular live stream as my own moment of maximum hubris and hopefully not. But I don't know. I was struck by that. Speaker 4 (5:59) It's not hubris, but as you know, and we've both said many times, I mean, he can do an unbelievable amount of damage in the bunker, so to speak, right? He can be half crazed and his, you know, but at the end of the day, Todd Blanch controls the Justice Department and Pete Hexeth, the Defense Department and Mark Wayne Mullen, DHS. And they are doing things in accord with their own views and in accord with Trump's views and orders. And they're fanat, both either, well, they're loyalists and lackeys and fanatics. some cases stephen miller certainly at the same time so the amount of damage that's being done obviously we go from springfield ohio uh with the haitians to what's happening with the military fantastic piece over the weekend uh about how hexeth got rid of extremely well respected general general donahue and and and the amount of damage that's being done throughout the military anyway so the the insanity is not inconsistent with doing a huge amount of damage i looked this up at one point A few months ago, I was curious. I was also in the kind of World War II analogies. You know, we lost a ton of soldiers. Hitler had already lost, and he killed a huge number of people. This is not, I'm Speaker 3 (7:05) not Speaker 4 (7:05) comparing this to Trump, except in the sense that losing and being somewhat delusional is not inconsistent with doing unbelievable amounts of damage, both to the world, but especially to your own country, when he controls the executive branch of the federal government, which is a powerful set of levers to control. and no one seems to be telling him internally that he's crazy i don't see much evidence of you know general kane telling him we can't got to stop i mean they're they're telling him a few things but not as much as they should be anyway so yes but he is but he is but it's a good sign i agree in the sense that he clearly knows i well that's a question does he not what's your psychological interpretation is he in denial and delusional or does he know that it's kind of falling apart but this is his putting of very front on? Or is that even a distinction without a difference somehow? Speaker 3 (7:54) Well, I look, I hesitate to continue to belabor this Hitler in the bunker analogy. We're in plenty of trouble as it is. When you're Speaker 4 (8:01) in Speaker 3 (8:01) a hole, keep on digging, you know? But I mean, I think it's both. I mean, I think he kind of toggles. There are moments when he is feeling good and feeling like all I need to do is to go out and tell the American people. Remind them of my accomplishments. Remind them about no tax on tips. You know, remind them about the one big, beautiful bill. And there's a political strategy connected to this. Right. He's moving forward. He's spending a ton of money from his pack to make this case to the American people. And I think that that he wouldn't be doing that. He wouldn't be, you know, sending out millions and millions and millions of his own dollars that he could easily, you know. push back into more personally enriching sorts of activities if he didn't think there was a puncher's chance. But there are other times when he is really kind of despairing and really blackpilling. I mean, like I think we talked last week, at least we wrote in Morning Shots about him sharing some really remarkable content from a MAGA influencer named Matt Van Swole, basically saying that the hour is late. You know, Republicans need to to wake up and they need to let this like. let the scales fall from their eyes and give the American people, you know, the Save America Act and and a whole laundry list of other sort of random things that Trump is not even really pushing for. Certainly, there's no actual legislative path to passing any of the things that they were talking about in this post. But that if if not for these things, Republicans would be walking into, you know, a bloodbath in the midterms. So I think it's I just don't. It seems to me that he is at such a such a level of sort of mental and psychological deterioration. that there isn't one way to look at his