WASHINGTONâOn Tuesday â does anyone remember Tuesday? â Donald Trump tried to demonstrate that he is sane and stable.An explosive new book had called into question his mental fitness, so the president had a showmanâs brainwave. He would throw open the doors to a private meeting on immigration, letting television cameras capture him in command, at length, at his familiar spot at the centre of a boardroom table.The plan didnât go perfectly. Trump was vague and contradictory. He did not seem to understand policy terminology, much less policy itself.But he was involved and subdued, and if it seemed that the country was being run by an ignoramus, it did not seem obvious, in those 55 minutes at least, that it was being run by someone unhinged. He got the usual praise from television pundits eager to find something nice to say.Then came Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.Within 60 hours of the Trumpâs self-described âperformanceâ at the immigration meeting, the wheels had fallen off. As so often with this president, a brief stab at model behaviour was immediately followed by an eruption of his worst traits.âWatching people lower the bar on his first meeting, the willingness of a lot of people in the media to say, âWell OK he at least looked coherent; he was ignorant and uninformed but at least he didnât do the crazy uncle routineâ â the phrase going through my head the whole time was: give it a day,â said Charlie Sykes, a conservative MSNBC analyst and a Trump critic. âHow many times have we gone through this? This whiplash: these little windows where he behaves himself, and thereâs always an expiration date. And it comes very quickly.âThere was the racism: Trump set off yet another international incident with yet another bigoted remark about immigrants. At a White House meeting on Thursday, he asked why the U.S. needs to take immigrants from âshithole countries̶ ...
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