Following a series of stinging defeats in the courts, a string of dreadful economic news, and the prospect of a House vote on a measure that would compel his administration to make the Epstein files public, Donald Trump on Saturday appears to have lost his mind.

Now, we know what you might say, “Well, there wasn’t much left to lose.”

It’s a fair point.

However, even by his very low standards, Trump reached a new nadir on Saturday when he threatened the city of Chicago and its 2.7 million residents with the use of military force.

“I love the smell of deportations in the morning…” the president wrote in a post featuring an AI-generated image of himself wearing a hat with the insignia of the US cavalry.

It also contains helicopters flying away from the skyline of Chicago with something burning in the background.

“Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” Trump added.

That would be an absolutely crazy thing for anybody to write, but the fact that it comes from the president is beyond mind-boggling.

One frequently used device to highlight Trump’s insanity is to challenge people to imagine the reaction if any other president had done the exact same thing.

For example, what would have happened if Barack Obama had essentially declared war on Mississippi (which has a similar population)?

But even that tool has its limits because it is inconceivable that any other president would ever do the things that Trump does routinely.

Condemnation of the post was swift.

“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal,” said Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D). “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”

That would sound like a reasonable response if the president were a normal, sane person.

As it is, however, it seems inadequate.

The people who want to preserve democracy and keep Trump from turning the US into an autocracy have to be even more outspoken.

The president has normalized insanity and corruption so much that those who hope to resist him have to find more effective tools to do so. They have to be even more blunt and get under Trump’s skin. Anything else will just not get that job done.

It defies belief that Trump has pushed the country to this point in just eight short months. However, seeing how we are here, it is time for every American to choose sides.

We know that tens of millions will stand with a mad president and support his march toward tyranny… and many of them fervently.

The question that remains is whether the anti-Trump majority in the country will just sit by and do nothing while the president violates each of the country’s values, or whether they will stand up and do something about it.

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