America might re-elect a crazy person

The most troubling thing about the Trump presidency isn't his mental state. It's that he might be re-elected.

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Tom Brenner/Getty Images, Eric Lesser - Pool/Getty Images, artishokcs/iStock, Aerial3/iStock)

There's a numbing sameness to political life during the presidency of Donald Trump. A series of scandalous stories break and fade, and appalling presidential behavior sparks outrage that quickly recedes into oblivion, only to be followed by another round, and then another. Yet even in the context of this seemingly endless cycle of scandal and outrage, the past 10 days or so has managed to stand out as unusually jam-packed with an almost surreal procession of astonishing events.

First, the president of the United States spent a stupefying six days disputing whether he had erred in suggesting that Alabama was at risk of damage from Hurricane Dorian. The fixation even included a comically petty act of doctoring a map with a Sharpie and an apparently successful effort to get someone at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to back him up.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.