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Parsing Who’s Delusional, Drugged, and Disinformed In Trump’s World

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One of the vital difficult elements of navigating the polycrisis is making an attempt to determine the seemingly delusional psychological states of main gamers like Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and the dominant and dissident voting blocks within the declining West.

That’s to say, are these individuals deluded, drugged, intentionally disinformed or what?

With the breakdown of late twentieth Century company mass tradition and the publish WW2 liberal consensus, we’re seeing an unprecedented breakdown in shared data sources.

In 2025, spouses, relations, colleagues, and informal acquaintances can all be primarily knowledgeable by wildly various data sources with few methods of understanding who’s conscious of what.

Let’s begin with POTUS Trump as a result of he made greater than his normal quite a lot of claims that look like wildly against consensus actuality together with the same old about victory in Ukraine and peace in Gaza but in addition some particular claims that shocked this observer.

On October 14, Trump publicly met with Argentinian President Javier Milei and the surrealism was off the charts. The total video is price a glance in case you have the stamina and sanity.

Essentially the most notable wildly false declare Trump made was the next about nations leaving BRICS (17:half-hour in):

Donald Trump: I believe if Biden would have, you understand, Biden, that group would have gotten elected, that means Kamala, you wouldn’t have the greenback as your forex anymore.

You wouldn’t have a world domination by the greenback if I didn’t win this election. And now the domination like bricks. I instructed anyone needs to be be in bricks, that’s superb, however we’re going to place tariffs in your nation. Everyone dropped out. They’re all dropping out of bricks. BRICS was an assault on the greenback. And I stated, you wish to play that recreation? I’m gonna put tariffs in your in your your whole product coming into the US. They stated, like I stated, we’re dropping out of BRICS and BRICS is like they don’t even speak about anymore.

Does he really consider this? Are his staffers telling him that nations are leaving BRICS? Are international leaders telling him what they suppose he needs to listen to? Is he taking psychosis-inducing quantities of Adderall?

That is on high of the already grim comedy of Milei’s presidency, the $20 billion U.S. bailout, and Milei’s ridiculous antics, together with a stadium live performance look to advertise his new guide:

To not point out the way in which Trump supporting farmers are being screwed by Trump’s try and import Argentinian beef whereas Argentina grabs extra of the Chinese language soybean market that Trump’s tariffs have frozen American producers out of.

Atrios’ tackle Bluesky factors out one thing that must be apparent however is never stated out loud. This planet is awash in mind-altering medicine and persons are addled. Sadly it’s not potential to know precisely who’s on what, when:

I’ve spent a lot of my life being oblivious to what I used to be later instructed had been apparent abuse issues on the a part of numerous individuals I knew.

I slept on this 2024 Rolling Stone piece about Trump 1.0 being awash in medicine. Right here’s a style:

In January, the Protection Division’s inspector common launched a report detailing how the White Home Medical Unit throughout the Trump administration distributed managed substances with scant oversight and even sloppier file holding.
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The report didn’t say why so lots of these drugs had been given out. However for a lot of who served within the Trump White Home, the investigation highlighted an open secret. In line with interviews with 4 former senior administration officers and others with information of the matter, the stimulant was routinely given to staffers who wanted an power enhance after a late evening, or only a pick-me-up to deal with one other day at a uniquely hectic job. As one of many former officers tells Rolling Stone, the White Home at the moment was “awash in velocity.”

Educated sources say that samples of the stimulant had been handed round for these contributing strains to main Trump speeches, working late hours on international coverage initiatives, responding to Particular Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, dealing with the deluge of media inquiries about that investigation, and a lot extra.
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The anti-anxiety medicine Xanax was additionally a preferred, easy-to-get drug throughout the Trump years, three sources inform us. Neither Xanax nor its generic, alprazolam, is talked about within the Pentagon report, which notes that it’s not a complete listing of the managed substances ordered throughout the Trump years. Two individuals with direct information of the state of affairs recall senior officers getting Xanax from the White Home Medical Unit — and sharing it with colleagues.

No purpose to consider the get together has stopped underneath Trump 2.0.

And I’m not going from the earlier subject to the subsequent subject for any explicit purpose, past my capacity to overlook the plain in each situations, on this one, someway I missed the gossip about Trump Division of Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem and would-be Trump 2024 marketing campaign supervisor Corey Lewandowski.

Should you’re behind like I used to be, these graphs from Corey’s wikipedia entry ought to catch you up on the nonsense:

Whereas DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was collaborating in an immigration raid on April 8, 2025, she was accompanied by Lewandowski, who launched himself to the federal brokers as “chief of workers.” DHS later clarified that he’s an adviser to DHS and a Particular authorities worker (SGE)] The Wall Avenue Journal subsequently described Lewandowski as Noem’s “de facto chief of workers,” including that there have been “White Home issues about their relationship”. When then-FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton testified earlier than Congress on Could 7, 2025, stating, “I don’t consider it’s in the very best curiosity of the American individuals to eradicate the Federal Emergency Administration Company”, a place which differed from the Trump administration, he was summoned to Noem’s workplace the next day, and was fired by Lewandowski, sitting at Noem’s desk.

When U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-California) was forcibly detained by safety brokers at a press convention Noem was giving in Los Angeles on June 12, 2025, Lewandowski, in keeping with Padilla, ran to the scene “yelling, ‘Let him go! Let him go!’”

Lewandowski met his future spouse Alison Hardy when he was in ninth grade and he or she was in eighth grade. In 1998, Hardy married Brian Kinney, who was killed onboard United Airways Flight 175 on September 11, 2001. 4 years later, in 2005, Lewandowski married Hardy. Collectively they’ve 4 kids. Lewandowski is a Catholic.

In September 2021, Lewandowski was faraway from his position as chairman of a brilliant PAC referred to as Make America Nice Once more Motion after stories of sexual harassment accusations from a donor.

That very same month, conservative media outlet American Greatness reported that Lewandowski was having an extramarital affair with South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, for whom he had lengthy been a political advisor. Noem referred to as the report a “disgusting lie”, saying, “these outdated, drained assaults on conservative girls are based mostly on a falsehood that we are able to’t obtain something with out a man’s assist.” In September 2023, the New York Put up and the Day by day Mail revealed related stories about Noem and Lewandowski, which Noem’s spokesman denied. As of September 2025, in keeping with the New York Journal, they had been broadly understood by those that work with them to be romantically connected, though each deny it.

The New York Journal piece “Prime Goon” is price quoting at size as properly:

“She’s going to play a key position in advancing Donald Trump’s effort to consolidate the powers of the presidency,” a former DHS official instructed me. “I believe by the tip of this administration, if she stays the entire time, she’s more likely to turn into the warden of the police state.”

On paper, Noem sits on the high of this empire. In apply, energy over immigration coverage is fractured, formed by competing factions, beginning with deputy chief of workers Stephen Miller, who has vowed within the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination to destroy anonymous forces which have conspired towards the proper — the lengthy arm of regulation enforcement, he warned them, “will probably be used to seek out you, will probably be used to remove your cash, take away your energy, and, in the event you’ve damaged the regulation, to remove your freedom.” Noem will probably be amongst these on the forefront of any such effort, surrounded by a good inside circle that may be tough to penetrate and infrequently not possible to work with. “The tradition over there may be horrible,” the administration official instructed me. “Persons are scared shitless of Corey.”

Lewandowski has been integral to Noem’s rise, her proper hand as they run roughshod over the rule of regulation and, like so many in Trump’s Cupboard, place themselves for a post-Trump future. Lewandowski is just not solely surreptitiously co-leading DHS with out congressional approval however has introduced Trumpworld’s manically pugnacious type to the division and drawn out a few of Noem’s personal pugnacious predilections, too.

In spite of everything, Trump’s immigration insurance policies, whereas broadly unpopular with those that oppose masked males snatching individuals off the streets and spiriting them away to brutal international prisons, stay fashionable amongst Republicans. Frank Luntz, the veteran political advisor, thinks that is at the very least partly owed to Noem, who provides the required stage presence to Lewandowski’s muscle and Miller’s mind.

“She might be the administration’s finest spokeswoman,” he instructed me. “The one factor that bothers me is that her title is just not talked about as a possible 2028 Republican Celebration chief. She’s underestimated.”

I even have to say the $172 million his-and-hers personal jets Noem bought.

I admit I’m shoehorning this Noem-Lewandowski factor into this piece, however that’s primarily as a result of I deeply remorse not plugging it into my piece final week on Russell Vought and Stephen Miller.

But additionally, Noem being talked up as future presidential materials has me questioning if outdated Frank Luntz isn’t utilizing psychedelic toads slime to carry down what has at all times seemed to be his hair piece.

I’m not saying Luntz received’t be proper both, I’m simply saying we’re collectively via the trying glass.

And talking of similar, this tweet that includes probably the most maximally triumphant tackle Trump’s international “coverage” needs to be included in any catalogue of Trump-era delirium:

Larry Johnson quoted a Zionist acquaintance with related delusions final week:

(The signing of the Sharm El-Sheikh Peace Plan) modified the whole lot. Arrayed behind Trump in Egypt had been all the key leaders on the planet apart from Putin and Xi. Trump has achieved one thing no person thought potential. Within the course of he has remoted Iran, however simply as necessary, he now made Putin look remoted when the remainder of the world is making an attempt to finish wars and create peace and prosperity.

Putin will probably be underneath much more stress to finish the conflict now. On the similar time, he’s not successful the conflict, and is shedding hundreds extra casualties simply when there are extreme labor shortages, and the financial system is headed to additional deterioration.

The assaults on the power amenities is having actual influence and a continuation of those assaults and assaults on rail strains will serve to trigger a lot extra financial decline over the winter.

Paying males to go die is starting to not work. It is rather costly and extra males are fleeing. Winter is about right here and so the preventing season is ending quickly and the timber will not present cowl from drones. Putin can attempt to go on for a very long time however the longer he does the more severe the financial system and the power state of affairs. The extra remoted Putin turns into from the Mideast and different elements of the world who are actually working collectively to construct the financial progress the world wants.

That is the proper arrange for Vice-POTUS J.D. Vance’s message that “it’s time for Russia to get up:”

Vice President Vance: One of many issues I actually admire concerning the president’s method to this complete battle and albeit all of the diplomatic efforts of the administration is that it’s very grounded in actuality and what’s taking place on the bottom.

Should you return to the final days of the Biden administration, in the event you return to even a few months in the past, the Russians had been conquering massive quantities of territory. Each month they had been gaining one other couple hundred sq. kilometers, perhaps greater than that.

And what’s taking place proper now, because the president articulated, is Russia’s actually stalled. They’re killing lots of people. They themselves are shedding lots of people they usually don’t have a lot territorial acquire to indicate for it.

And so the president is trying on the state of affairs. He’s saying, ‘Look, the Russian financial system is in shambles. the Russians will not be gaining a lot on the battlefield.’

It’s clearly time for them to take heed to his passionate plea for them to come back to the desk and truly speak severely about peace. So, I don’t you ask what’s modified. I believe what’s modified is the truth on the bottom the place the Russians are killing lots of people.

Which brings us to this piece from Simplicius

Azov Brigade head Bohdan Krotevych says the quiet half out loud. He says European companions are stored from the entrance as a result of AFU command doesn’t need them to see the true actuality of the state of affairs there.

It appears at this level the AFU’s collapse is being hidden from all related events, and this information blackout is trickling as much as Trump and his circus who reimagine the conflict as Russia ‘badly shedding’ with thousands and thousands of casualties.

Or perhaps Trump’s not so ignorant in any case, per the Monetary Instances:

Donald Trump urged Volodymyr Zelenskyy to just accept Russia’s phrases for ending its conflict in a unstable White Home assembly on Friday, warning that Vladimir Putin had stated he would “destroy” Ukraine if it didn’t agree.

The assembly between the US and Ukrainian presidents descended many instances right into a “shouting match”, with Trump “cursing on a regular basis”, individuals acquainted with the matter stated.

They added that the US president tossed apart maps of the frontline in Ukraine, insisted Zelenskyy give up the complete Donbas area to Putin, and repeatedly echoed speaking factors the Russian chief had made of their name a day earlier.

Although Ukraine finally managed to swing Trump again to endorsing a freeze of the present entrance strains, the acrimonious assembly appeared to mirror the capricious nature of Trump’s place on the conflict and his willingness to endorse Putin’s maximalist calls for.

Which is a good pivot to the newest from Emmanuel Todd on the delusions of the European center class:

are at the moment’s center lessons, significantly the higher center lessons, affordable? Are they peaceable? What are their goals?

They’re loopy. The development of a post-national Europe is a delusional venture when one considers the variety of the continent. It has led to the enlargement of the European Union, cobbled collectively and unstable, into the previous Soviet house. The EU is now Russophobic and warmongering, with its aggression renewed by its financial defeat by the hands of Russia. The EU is making an attempt to pull the British, French, German and plenty of different peoples into an actual conflict. However what an odd conflict it might be, wherein the Western elites have adopted Hitler’s dream of destroying Russia!

The comparability by social class subsequently permits us to make a significant mental breakthrough. Europeanism, and subsequently Macronism, fall, via their exterior aggressiveness, on the facet of nationalism, on the facet of the pre-war far proper. If we add to this the more and more huge and systematic violations of freedom of knowledge and fashionable suffrage inside the EU, we come even nearer to the notion of the far proper. Based as an affiliation of liberal democracies, Europe is mutating right into a far-right house. Sure, the comparability with the Nineteen Thirties is beneficial, even indispensable.

Within the grandiose Europeanist venture, we discover a psychopathological dimension already observable in Hitlerism: paranoia. Europeanist paranoia focuses on Russia. Nazi paranoia made the Jewish risk a precedence, with out nonetheless neglecting Russian Bolshevism (generally known as Judeo-Bolshevism).
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Immediately in Europe, we’re coping with madmen, or reasonably with a collective insanity that has gripped people from the dominant social lessons en masse. In France alone, hundreds of journalists, politicians, lecturers, enterprise leaders and senior civil servants are collaborating within the collective hallucination of a Russia that might wish to conquer Europe (paranoia). No particular person might be held personally accountable. We’re coping with a collective psychological dynamic.
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The Nazi anti-Semites had a totally totally different psychological structure. The demise of God, to cite Nietzsche, had actually launched them on a quest for a Führer, however they had been hardly missing in superego and remained able to collective motion. The tragic efficiency of the German military throughout the Second World Battle bears witness to this. Who at the moment would dare to think about our higher center lessons speeding to their deaths, on the head of their peoples, in the direction of Kiev and Kharkov? Our conflict in Ukraine is a joke, a product of the emancipation of the self, the offspring of non-public growth. Solely Ukrainians and Russians will die.

Until…

Thermonuclear exchanges can do with out heroes.

I don’t wish to finish on a grim be aware so let’s let Kamala Harris, somebody who’s been in all three of our mentioned states shut us out.

Her new guide obtained ripped within the Guardian for being movie star addled and delusional:

A hanging function of her marketing campaign was the way it leaned into vibes and spectacle reasonably than substance, or constructing religion in Harris as a clear break from an unpopular and visibly deteriorating Joe Biden. Her new guide, 107 Days, a memoir of the precise variety of days she needed to win the presidency, goes a great distance in explaining why that was. Briefly, Harris – and people round her, together with supportive media events – obtained excessive on their very own provide.
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The guide reveals a politician who’s all concerning the equipment of politics, reasonably than one with conviction spurred by a way of obligation, or a coherent and particular set of values that differentiate her.
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My abiding feeling studying was: oh God, this was all simply as unhealthy because it appeared. The celebrity-packed marketing campaign roster was not, in actual fact, panicked desperation, however the choice of the candidate and her staff. They thought that such a variety of characters would present that Harris was “welcoming everybody into the marketing campaign” – as if the ability of movie star might do the unifying work of coalition-building, reasonably than her personal programme and politicking.

The immersion within the filmic, the celluloid of US politics is so full that there’s a line about Jon Bon Jovi performing for her and it being a great omen, as a result of he carried out for a candidate who received in The West Wing. The media beloved her. “And behold,” Harris quotes a Washington Put up author, praising her method to Gaza, “she had her boat via the not possible strait.” Jon Favreau stated Harris was “a sight to behold” on the Democratic conference.

I’ll shut with some quotes from this video from Scott Carney, a YouTuber specializing in exposing frauds and grifts. He argues that we’re on the verge of a society-wide collapse of belief so grave it might really result in a lower in grifting alternatives:

we now have arrived on the period of peak grift the place liars, cheaters, and charlatans could have an ever more durable time promoting their wares to unsuspecting audiences. And this isn’t excellent news. It ought to terrify completely everybody who’s watching this video as a result of what occurs after the collapse of the grifter financial system goes to be a lot worse than you might ever think about.
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What occurs after we zoom out to the general grifting financial system, or if you’ll, the macroeconomic situations that permit grifters to succeed. The one useful resource that every one grifters share is a elementary baseline of fact, or in the event you desire, actuality. Now, by definition, grifters monetize lies by subverting fact. In any other case, it wouldn’t be grifting. It could simply be promoting high quality merchandise that truly work.

And herein lies a elementary downside. For grifters to succeed, they want a steady base, which implies a great financial system, typically optimistic well being outcomes, and enduring establishments, which finally earn the belief of the individuals normally. Grifters can solely thrive by profiting off of the margins and the boundaries of that underlying basis of belief.
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Now add to this a proliferation of AI slop, state sponsored propaganda from Russia, international actors, and even our personal propaganda, and on-line scammers who’ve stolen greater than a trillion {dollars} within the final yr. The online impact is that belief, an important useful resource that grifters exploit to take your cash, is being eroded at its foundations. Like every financial system, when you get an oversupply of 1 explicit commodity, on this case grifting, it turns into more and more tough to generate income in that area of interest. It’s easy provide and demand. Now, in a steady society with dependable establishments, individuals search for methods to beat the system the place area of interest alternatives may allow them to get forward. Generally they even succeed. However in a collapsing system, individuals want to hunt out dependable data. And whereas I can’t inform you the place that dependable data really is correct now, I do know that the demand for it’s increased now than it has ever been in my lifetime.

And naturally our closing quote supply repeats the Russian disinformation canard (has any nation ever been worse at PR?) and on that be aware, I’m out.

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