The Week Magazine 13th January 2018 Back Issue

UNFIT TO RULE?
There is no more serious issue facing America today “than the possibility, if not the likelihood, that we have in the White House a man who is mentally unfit for the job”, said Bill Press on The Hill (Washington). The “drumbeat of doubt” about Donald Trump’s stability has reached a new pitch following the publication of Michael Wolff’s tell-all book, Fire and Fury. Even allies now talk of removing Trump from office on the grounds of incapacity. Wolff’s book paints a picture of a man whose “closest aides, friends and even family believe is congenitally unfit to be president”, said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. Trump, Wolff reports, won’t read anything, not even one-page memos. He retreats to bed at 6.30pm, where he eats burgers, watches cable TV and rants at his cronies on the phone. He repeats himself endlessly; he fails to recognise old friends. White House officials describe him as an “idiot”, a “child”, a “dope”, a “moron”. And yet this man has “unchecked power over the world’s mightiest nuclear arsenal”.