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The Unadorned Truth About Donald Trump
We must treat him like any other candidate for high office who is
emotionally and mentally unstable.
By Jeffrey Goldberg
Donald Trump speaks from a podium during his campaign rally
Brandon Bell / Getty
June 27, 2024, 6:17 PM ET
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you
through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Earlier this year, Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins suggested that
voters, in the interest of civic hygiene and personal illumination, attend
a Trump rally. This would be the way to understand the candidate, his
thoughts, and his supporters, Coppins argued. He himself has attended more
than 100 such gatherings since 2016, and he noted, correctly, that ônothing quite captures the Trump ethos like his campaign rallies.ö
I myself have attended only a few of these rallies (though among them was TrumpÆs January 6, 2020, rally on the Ellipse, which should count double).
But what one derives from the experience is, in the words of our colleague
Tom Nichols, the visceral sense that Trump is deeply unwell.
Attendance at Trump rallies can be metaphysically taxingùand some seem to
go longer than a Taylor Swift concert. So watching them from beginning to
end online is occasionally a welcome substitute.
A couple of weeks ago, on C-SPAN, I watched my first Trump rally in quite
some time, a gathering under a heat dome in Las Vegas. I watched not
because I expected to learn something new about the candidate, but because
I had been alerted by concerned friends and colleagues that Trump had
attacked me by name. This hadnÆt happened in quite some time, and self- interest dictated watching.
Trump is upset with me, and with The Atlantic, for a story I wrote in
September of 2020, in which I reported, among other things, that he
referred to American soldiers killed in action as ôsuckersö and ôlosers.ö
(For more on the particulars, please read this story by Adrienne LaFrance.) Trump is also upset by a profile I wrote late last year of retired General
Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which
Milley, a decorated combat veteran, is portrayed as someone who defended
the Constitution against TrumpÆs depredations. In response to this article, Trump suggested that Milley be executed.
At his Las Vegas rally, Trump described me as a ôhorrible, radical-left
lunatic named Goldbergö (he hit the word Goldberg with what I perhaps, or perhaps not, overinterpreted as special feeling). He articulated, at great length, why he would never disparage American service members. (Dear
reader: He disparages the military constantly.)
All of this was to be expected. What I found surprising, as I watched his entire presentation, was the ratio of gibberish to normal sentences. Which
is to say, there was even more gibberish than I remembered in the typical
Trump speech. The apotheosis of gibberish was his extended soliloquy on
sharks and battery-powered boats. No summary could do it justice, so here
is an extended cut:

ôBy the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Do you notice that? A lot
of sharks. I watched some guys justifying it today. æWell, they werenÆt
really that angry. They bit off the young ladyÆs leg because of the fact
that they were not hungry, but they misunderstood who she was.Æ These
people are crazy. He said, æThereÆs no problem with sharks. They just
didnÆt really understand a young woman swimming,Æ now, who really got
decimated and other people too, a lot of shark attacks. So I said, æSo
thereÆs a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, and water goes over the batteryùthe
boat is sinking; do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?Æ Because I will tell you
he didnÆt know the answer. He said, æNobodyÆs ever asked me that
question.Æ I said, æI think itÆs a good question. I think thereÆs a lot of electric current coming through that water.Æ But you know what IÆd do if
there was a shark or you get electrocuted, IÆll take electrocution every
single time. IÆm not getting near the shark. So we going to end that. WeÆre going to end it for boats. WeÆre going to end it for trucks.ö

Please watch the whole thing, and as you do, imagine TrumpÆs words coming
from the mouth of President Biden, and then imagine the Democratic Party allowing Biden to continue to run for president.
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Trump overwhelms us with nonsense. This is the ôbanality of crazy,ö as the Atlantic contributor Brian Klaas calls it. By ôus,ö I mean, of course, the voting public, but I especially mean the editors and headline-writers of my industry, who sometimes succumb to one of the most pernicious biases in journalism, the bias toward coherence. We feel, understandably, that it is
our job to make things make sense. But what if the actual story is that politics today makes no sense?
It works like this: Trump sounds nuts, but he canÆt be nuts, because heÆs
the presumptive nominee for president of a major party, and no major party would nominate someone who is nuts. Therefore, it is our responsibility to
sand down his rhetoric, to identify any kernel of meaning, to make light of
his bizarro statements, to rationalize. Which is why, after the electric-
shark speech, much of the coverage revolved around the high temperatures in
Las Vegas, and other extraneities. The Associated Press headline on a story about the event read this way: ôTrump Complains About His Teleprompters at
a Scorching Las Vegas Rally.ö The New York Times headlined its story thus:
ôIn Las Vegas, Trump Appeals to Local Workers and Avoids Talk of
Conviction.ö CNNÆs headline: ôTrump Proposes Eliminating Taxes on Tips at
Las Vegas Campaign Rally.ö
In my house, the headline from the Las Vegas rally was the disconcerting
and surprising news that IÆm a ôradical-left lunatic.ö Outside my house, though, the public should have been informed, above everything else, that a former and possibly future president went on a ludicrous, illiterate rant
about sharks and batteries, a rant that calls into question not only his fitness for office but his basic cognitive abilities.
Watching the Las Vegas rally reinforced my view that, at our magazine, we
can best serve our readers by highlighting aspects of TrumpÆs rhetoric and behavior that we would highlight about any other politician, including Joe Biden. IÆve never wanted this magazine to become part of the ôresistance.ö
(You just have to read our coverage of Biden to understand that we are
not.) I simply believe that we should tell the unadorned truth about Trump,
and treat him like any other candidate for high office who is emotionally
and mentally unstable. A bias toward coherence is understandable. But
reality is what we must live with long after the debates and rallies are
over.

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