Observers of American presidential history are still scratching their heads, trying to find another speech as unhinged as the 75-minute jaw-dropper from Donald Trump on Tuesday night.
Presidents have been known to make preposterous statements and claims. Mr. Trump scaled new heights. A CNN account documented what it called the 57 most outrageous quotes from the oration.
The speech renewed speculation about the President's cranial stability. Mr. Trump denounced his own party, threatened to shut down the government, threatened to terminate NAFTA, blamed the media for his failures and continued with patently false claim after claim.
He calmed down a bit on Wednesday and Thursday, but he has increased the level of fear, loathing and alarm over what could come next. Among the most nightmarish scenarios was one from James Clapper, who served for seven years as head of U.S. intelligence. Mr. Clapper said the speech was disturbing. "Having some understanding of the levers that a president can exercise," he told CNN, "I worry about, frankly, the access to the nuclear codes."
No one has the power, he said, to block the President's launch orders. If "in a fit of pique he decides to do something about Kim Jong-un, there's actually very little to stop him … there's very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary."
Pretty damn scary. So much so that on Capitol Hill, Democrats have put forward a bill that would prohibit the President from launching a nuclear strike without a declaration of war by Congress.
At home, the worst can't be ruled out either. Mr. Trump is increasingly alienating himself from the Republican Party – his threat to shut down the government if he does not get funding for his wall on the Mexican border is just the latest example. Republican support will be desperately needed if the Mueller inquiry finds him guilty of collusion with the Russians or, more likely, obstruction of justice. Many Republicans, envisaging major losses at the polls, may wish to move against him.
Given the impassioned support Mr. Trump gets from his base – and given its rancour, malice and zealotry – any move toward impeachment could trigger bloody and lasting civil strife. The political atmosphere is already terribly polarized here. Lighting the fuse would not take much.
Some have theorized that Mr. Trump doesn't want the presidency and will voluntarily exit. This is farfetched: Egomaniacs crave power. Some speculate that he suffers from narcissistic personality disorder. (If he were to lose an election, it wouldn't surprise if he claimed it was rigged.)
On NAFTA, the Trump threat is being looked upon as bluster. It probably is. But the President could in fact pull the plug on the accord. He is getting desperate for a big win – a show pony for all to see that he fulfills his promises. Shutting down the renegotiations and terminating NAFTA would be a way.
Ottawa should be preparing for all eventualities. While a termination of the accord would be ugly, NAFTA is not the be all and end all. In the decades before any free-trade agreement was signed, bilateral trade expanded by leaps and bounds. Most trade was already free before free trade with the United States and Mexico came along. It would have continued to expand without the deals. Since NAFTA was signed, Ottawa has diversified its trading markets. This will also ease the pain of an exit.
Most believe Mr. Trump will not carry out the threat. There is an optimists camp among Republicans that still believes he will grow into the job. As indicated with his policy switch on Afghanistan, wherein he listened to his generals, and with changes in White House staffing that have unloaded nationalist radicals, this camp believes he can shed his wild and unruly tendencies.
They believe he will continue to benefit from a good economy, that he will come to learn that he has to co-operate with Congress to get anything done, that his advisers will increasingly rein him in.
It would be a welcome scenario. But just about every time someone starts talking this way about Donald Trump, he gives a crazed speech like the one in Phoenix or goes on a Twitter rant insulting and alienating those whose support he needs to govern. Those in the optimists camp should be delivered from their delusions.
Lawrence Martin