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   From: X@Y.com   
      
   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   
      
   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   
   “nothing quite captures the Trump ethos like his campaign rallies.”   
   I myself have attended only a few of these rallies (though among them was   
   Trump’s 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 taxing—and 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 hadn’t 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 “suckers” and “losers.”   
   (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 Trump’s depredations. In   
   response to this article, Trump suggested that Milley be executed.   
   At his Las Vegas rally, Trump described me as a “horrible, radical-left   
   lunatic named Goldberg” (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:   
      
       “By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Do you notice that? A lot   
   of sharks. I watched some guys justifying it today. ‘Well, they weren’t   
   really that angry. They bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact   
   that they were not hungry, but they misunderstood who she was.’ These   
   people are crazy. He said, ‘There’s no problem with sharks. They just   
   didn’t really understand a young woman swimming,’ now, who really got   
   decimated and other people too, a lot of shark attacks. So I said, ‘So   
   there’s 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 battery—the   
   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?’ Because I will tell   
   you he didn’t know the answer. He said, ‘Nobody’s ever asked me that   
   question.’ I said, ‘I think it’s a good question. I think there’s a lot   
   of electric current coming through that water.’ But you know what I’d do   
   if there was a shark or you get electrocuted, I’ll take electrocution   
   every single time. I’m not getting near the shark. So we going to end   
   that. We’re going to end it for boats. We’re going to end it for trucks.”   
      
   Please watch the whole thing, and as you do, imagine Trump’s words coming   
   from the mouth of President Biden, and then imagine the Democratic Party   
   allowing Biden to continue to run for president.   
      
   Trump overwhelms us with nonsense. This is the “banality of crazy,” as   
   the Atlantic contributor Brian Klaas calls it. By “us,” 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 can’t be nuts, because he’s   
   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:   
   “Trump Complains About His Teleprompters at a Scorching Las Vegas Rally.”   
   The New York Times headlined its story thus: “In Las Vegas, Trump Appeals   
   to Local Workers and Avoids Talk of Conviction.” CNN’s headline: “Trump   
   Proposes Eliminating Taxes on Tips at Las Vegas Campaign Rally.”   
   In my house, the headline from the Las Vegas rally was the disconcerting   
   and surprising news that I’m a “radical-left lunatic.” 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 Trump’s rhetoric   
   and behavior that we would highlight about any other politician,   
   including Joe Biden. I’ve never wanted this magazine to become part of   
   the “resistance.” (You just have to read our coverage of Biden to   
   understand that we are not.) I simply believe that we should tell the   
      
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