Listen To This Story

Even though Donald Trump is heading the most lawless administration in American history, and hardly a day goes by without the type of revelations, rhetoric, or behavior that would have doomed any of his predecessors, congressional Republicans have shown zero appetite to conduct any kind of oversight of “their” president. 

Instead, they are spending their energy on retroactively investigating Joe Biden’s mental fitness. One main line of inquiry is whether he was aware of what was going on toward the end of his presidency, and, if not, who was making the decisions in his stead. 

To be clear, those are valid questions and they deserve answers.  

While Republicans are overhyping their “findings,” which aren’t really findings at all at this point, it’s quite clear that Biden’s physical health and mental acuity were declining, so it is entirely fair to ask whether he was still up to the job at that point.

The presidency is incredibly demanding, and Americans deserve a commander in chief who is always “on,” in control, and up to date on what is happening in the country and in the world. 

There’s plenty of evidence that this wasn’t the case at the end of Biden’s term, which begs the question of who was advising him at the time and perhaps even making decisions in his name. 

Now, you can say that, even if that was the case, the people in his inner circle knew what the president wanted and were aligned with him ideologically, so the administration’s policies would have remained the same. Still, the American people elected Biden — not his chief of staff, senior aides, some consultants, or his wife.

To Republicans — who conveniently overlook that the same questions and concerns were raised when their pre-Trump hero Ronald Reagan was in office — this is a historic and unique scandal. 

The way they tell it, Biden was a doddering fool in 2024 who had outsourced his presidency to staffers and an autopen. 

Trump, for example, called it a “tremendous scandal” and claimed that his predecessor was clueless as to what was going on around him. 

“I guarantee you he knew nothing about what he was signing, I guarantee you,” he said earlier this year. 

That is likely as false as the statements from Democrats who maintained, right up until the point when the country witnessed his decline firsthand, that Biden was as sharp as a tack. The reality lies somewhere in between.

And, as we said, these are important questions that merit investigation. 

How aware was the president of what was going on in the world? Who was whispering what into his ear? And who was actually making some of the decisions that affect Americans?

But here’s the thing: The same questions also need to be asked now. 

Because there are plenty of indications that Trump has no idea what’s happening in his administration, in the United States, or in the rest of the world. 

For example, the administration is currently ramping up the use of the military in Portland, OR, which the president called “war-ravaged.” 

However, his comments to a local reporter seems to indicate that Trump is actually clueless with regard to the actual conditions on the ground. 

In the interview, he referenced a conversation with Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek (D), during which she described the reality on the ground, which was starkly different from what the president had seen and has been told.

“I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,” Trump said. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place … It looks like terrible.”

Who are these people and what are they telling the president?

Of course, we know part of the answer to these questions.

Not surprisingly, Fox News is involved. In order to hype up its coverage of the issue, the right-wing propaganda network has admitted to using footage from the 2020 George Floyd protests in Portland, which were more violent and involved more property damage. 

For years, Fox (with ample help from Trump himself) has created an alternate reality that has replaced actual reality for millions of MAGA faithful… and for the president himself. 

However, Trump’s ignorance does not seem to just stem from the right-wing echo chamber he helped create and lives in. It appears as though his staff is keeping him in the dark on many crucial issues. 

For example, as part of the administration’s effort to punish blue states, it cut $187 million for counterterrorism efforts in New York. 

That’s a big deal.

Did Trump know about it? 

Apparently not. 

According to The New York Times, he “was blindsided by the decision to defund the police, not learning of the cuts until Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York called him on Sunday to protest the change after the fact, according to three people with knowledge of the call.”

The funding was then restored.

And when Democratic leaders met with the president and their Republican counterparts to resolve the government shutdown, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Trump was unaware of the looming increase in health care premiums that millions of Americans are facing. 

These are all huge issues, and the president increasingly seems to be in the dark about what’s going on around him. 

Here’s a video from May in which Joseph Dominquez, the president and CEO of the energy provider Constellation, explains to the president what’s in the executive order he is signing. 

Part of the problem is that Trump lacks intellectual curiosity, which is quite an understatement, and that he is extraordinarily gullible.

That brings us to a bizarre incident last week that has largely escaped the public’s notice. 

For reasons that we cannot fathom, Trump shared an AI-generated video of a Fox News segment featuring a fake version of himself that promotes a “MedBed card.” If you are unfamiliar with MedBeds, and we hope for your sake that you are, this is a popular right-wing conspiracy theory according to which the government has access to a futuristic medical technology that can cure any illness and regenerate limbs.

This is alarming for many reasons. 

First of all, MedBeds aren’t real; but did Trump not know that? And didn’t he realize that this was a fake version of himself on the screen? Did he not remember that he never said those words? 

The troubling answer is that he probably had no clue. 

Even worse, this example shows that Trump will believe just about anything somebody who’s loyal to him puts in front of him, which is deeply concerning in light of how realistic AI-generated videos can be. 

It seems as though anybody with access to the president could get him to believe the most ridiculous things.

Therefore, it is entirely conceivable that people with much more extreme agendas than Trump’s, such as ghoulish White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, or Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, are lying to him to get the president to do their bidding.

For example, he keeps citing imaginary polls that show him with approval ratings twice as high as they are in reality. If Trump isn’t just inventing them (which is a real possibility), then someone is showing him inaccurate data that he chooses to believe.

All of this is at least as disconcerting as what happened during the last administration. Back then, everybody waited too long to have a conversation about the extent to which Biden was in control of the US government. 

With much more at stake now that Trump is turning the US into an autocracy, we don’t have that luxury this time around. 

We need to talk about this right now and figure out whether the president is actually running the country (which would be bad enough) or whether some of his underlings are manipulating him into doing what they want.