Dear Editor,

Last week, our president addressed the United Nations in which he rambled and scolded the members, many of them our allies, for over 90 minutes. The UN requests that speakers limit themselves to 20 minutes. 

This week, the president who received five draft deferments—four for college, one for bad feet—babbled on for 70 minutes to a room full of career officers who had sworn an oath to the Constitution. 

Heather Cox Richardson in her blog Letters from an American summarized the event.   

“He spoke slowly, slurring words, delivering to the hundreds of professionals who had rushed from around the world to attend this meeting a rambling, incoherent stream of words that jumped from what appeared to be prepared remarks to his own improvisation.

“He covered the ‘Gulf of America,’ the seven or eight wars he claims to have ended, the ‘millions and millions of lives’ he has saved, nuclear weapons (one of the two ‘n-words’ he informed the military leaders you can’t say), his demanding ‘beautiful paper, the gorgeous paper’ with ‘the real gold writing’ when he signs things (‘I love my signature. I really do. Everyone loves my signature,’ he said), finding $31 billion on ‘the tariff shelf,’ making Canada the 51st state, his dislike of the ‘aesthetics’ of certain Navy ships, wild claims about his 2024 electoral victory, the press, America First, immigrants from prisons and mental institutions, and Venezuelans not daring to go out in boats for fear the U.S. will ‘blow [them] out of existence.’”

In an article in the Atlantic Daily published the next day by Tom Nichols titled, “The Commander in Chief is Not Okay,” Nichols writes: “The president talked at length, and his comments should have confirmed to even the most sympathetic observer that he is, as the kids say, not okay.

“Several of Hegseth’s people said in advance of the senior-officer conclave that its goal was to energize America’s top military leaders and get them to focus on Hegseth’s vision for a new Department of War. But the generals and admirals should be forgiven if they walked out of the auditorium and wondered: What on earth is wrong with the commander in chief?”

Here’s another excerpt from Trump’s speech to demonstrate what a colossal waste this event was: “They looked at him (Biden) falling downstairs every day. Every day, the guy is falling downstairs. He said, It’s not our President. We can’t have it. I’m very careful. You know, when I walk downstairs for, like, a month, stairs, like these stairs, I’m very—I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall, because it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy. We don’t want that. You walk nice and easy. You’re not having—you don’t have to set any record. Be cool. Be cool when you walk down, but don’t—don’t pop down the stairs. So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a President, but he would bop down those stairs. I’ve never seen it. Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He’d go down the stairs. Wouldn’t hold on.

“I said, It’s great. I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it. But eventually, bad things are going to happen, and it only takes once. But he did a lousy job as president. A year ago, we were a dead country. We were dead. This country was going to hell.”  Psychobabble, costing millions in taxpayer money to convene this conclave.

A second quote from the Atlantic Daily article tells why his potential mental decline is such a serious issue. “In 1973, an Air Force nuclear-missile officer named Harold Hering asked a simple question during a training session: ‘How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?’ The question cost him his career. Military members are trained to execute orders, not question them.

“But today, both the man who can order the use of nuclear arms and the man who would likely verify such an order gave disgraceful and unnerving performances in Quantico. How many officers left the room asking themselves Major Hering’s question?”

This unserious man, surrounded by very serious acolytes ready to carry out his presumed “agenda,” is dismantling our government, clawing back congressionally approved spending, claiming climate change is a leftist hoax, firing all the watch dogs, using the levers of our government to attack anyone who doesn’t agree with him, and calling his foes “leftist lunatics.” This is hubris on display for all to see. 

Hubris is defined as “having excessive pride, arrogance, and overconfidence, often to the point of believing themselves infallible or superior to others. This overwhelming self-belief can lead to a distorted view of reality, a disregard for criticism, and ultimately, poor decisions that result in their own downfall.”

This is material for a Greek tragedy.  The protagonist has a tragic flaw that the audience sees but the protagonist doesn’t, which ultimately leads to their own demise.  The question is, will there be a functioning democracy left by then?

Bill Thibedeau

Gilpin County