ANALYSIS: Trump Threatens to Destroy Iran and Insults the Pope — Even His Allies Call It Madness

Age vs. Instability—Two Radically Different Crises

America has had a president whose abilities were questioned before. But never like this.

The parallel with Joe Biden is tempting yet misleading. Biden was visibly aging in front of the cameras—the lost words, the hesitations, the moments of confusion that millions of Americans witnessed in real time. It was the predictable, painful but understandable decline of a man in his 80s. His staff was managing the situation. The institutions were functioning. Foreign policy remained on a familiar track.

Trump poses a problem of an entirely different nature. He is not a man who forgets a name or loses his train of thought. He is a president who, in the same week, threatens to annihilate a country, insults the spiritual leader of a billion people, and makes a string of statements that Peter Baker—chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, covering his sixth presidency—describes as “disjointed, hard to follow, and at times obscene.”

The Difference Between Decline and Derailment

Biden was in decline. Trump is derailing. And yet, the potential consequences are infinitely more serious. A president in decline can be surrounded, advised, and reined in. A president who threatens genocide at 3 a.m. on social media, in a time of war, with nuclear codes in his pocket, cannot be “managed” by an increasingly small and increasingly servile circle of advisors.

Never in modern American history has a president’s stability been so publicly, so meticulously, so forensically debated—with such profound consequences. Those are the words of The New York Times, not mine. And yet those words still fall short of reality.

A constitutional mechanism designed for this very moment

The U.S. Constitution anticipated this scenario. The political courage to activate it, however, has never materialized.

The 25th Amendment, Section 4, is crystal clear. If the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet determine that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” they may temporarily remove him from office. It is a constitutional safeguard designed precisely for the scenario in which a president becomes a danger to the nation.

It has never been invoked in this context. And it probably won’t be today either. The reason is stark: the 25th Amendment requires political courage. It requires the vice president—JD Vance—and a majority of the Cabinet to publicly stand up against the man who appointed them, who can fire them, and whose base can destroy their careers with a single tweet.

Institutional paralysis in the face of the unthinkable

This is the most dangerous paradox of American democracy in 2026: the constitutional tools exist, the alarm bells are blaring, even the most loyal allies are sounding the alarm—and the system remains paralyzed. Because the 25th Amendment was never intended for a president who controls his party through fear, who has turned loyalty into a test of political survival, and who has spent a decade destroying anyone who dared to contradict him.

Democrats are calling for its invocation. But Democrats have no constitutional leverage here. Only the vice president and the Cabinet can act. And yet, every day that passes without action is a day when a man whom his own former allies describe as “lunatic” and “clearly deranged” retains access to the nuclear codes, U.S. diplomacy, and the fate of millions of lives.

Nixon had a theory. Trump is its living refutation

Being unpredictable is a strategy. Being inconsistent is a symptom.

The standard defense of Trump’s inner circle rests on the concept of “crazy like a fox”—the fox that feigns madness to destabilize its opponents. It’s a well-documented negotiation strategy. Nixon used it during the Vietnam War, convincing the Soviets that he was unstable enough to press the nuclear button. The bluff worked—because Nixon, in private, remained cold, calculating, and methodical.

Trump, according to descriptions by his own former advisors, isn’t pretending. The rambling statements aren’t an act. The threats of genocide aren’t a subtle diplomatic maneuver. The attack on the pope serves no identifiable strategic purpose. There is no plan behind the chaos—there is only chaos.

When Unpredictability Becomes a Systemic Risk

Strategic unpredictability requires a fundamental prerequisite: credibility. An adversary must believe that the “madman” might act on his threats. But when threats become so extreme, so frequent, so disconnected from any strategic logic, unpredictability no longer destabilizes—it terrifies. And a terrified world does not negotiate. It prepares for the worst.

Iran is preparing. Europe is distancing itself. China is watching and taking notes. And the United States’ traditional allies are wondering for the first time whether the greatest danger to global security comes not from Moscow, Beijing, or Tehran—but from Washington.

The Goldwater Rule and Its Impossibility in 2026

American psychiatrists have refrained from diagnosing a president from a distance. History may condemn them for this silence.

In 1964, thousands of psychiatrists had publicly declared candidate Barry Goldwater psychologically unfit for the presidency. The American Psychiatric Association responded by establishing the “Goldwater Rule”: a formal prohibition against any mental health professional diagnosing a public figure without having examined them in person. Medical ethics protected professional conduct. Sixty-two years later, do these ethics still protect anyone—or do they primarily protect a dangerous president?

Hundreds of mental health professionals have broken this rule since 2017. Their warnings have been systematically dismissed as partisan. And yet, each new week brings fresh evidence that makes their remote diagnoses increasingly difficult to ignore.

What those with open eyes see

Retired generals who served under Trump are speaking out. Diplomats who negotiated on his behalf are speaking out. Foreign officials who have met him in person are speaking out. They are not psychiatrists. They don’t need to be. What they describe—rambling speech, an inability to follow a briefing, disproportionate reactions, obsessive fixations, the disappearance of any filter between thought and speech—paints a portrait that requires no medical degree to interpret.

The debate over Trump’s mental health is no longer a medical diagnosis. It is an empirical observation that millions of people are making in real time, every day, as they watch him speak.

A president at war is an untouchable president—that’s the calculation

What if war were not a consequence of instability, but its most effective shield?

America is at war. Troops are deployed. Airstrikes have begun. And historically, a president at war enjoys virtually absolute political protection. “Rally around the flag”—the country rallies behind the commander-in-chief when bombs are falling. To criticize a president at war is to risk being accused of treason, of undermining troop morale, or of colluding with the enemy.

That is precisely what makes the current situation so terrifying. The moment when the question of presidential fitness arises with the greatest urgency is also the moment when it is politically most dangerous to raise it. The 25th Amendment is more necessary than ever—and more impossible than ever to invoke.

The Vicious Cycle of Escalation

A president whose stability is in question has a direct interest in maintaining a permanent state of emergency. War justifies exceptional powers. Exceptional powers silence the opposition. The opposition’s silence allows for escalation. Escalation justifies new exceptional powers. And the cycle repeats itself.

When Trump threatened to destroy Iranian civilization, he wasn’t negotiating with Tehran. He was sending a message to Washington: I am at war, I am untouchable, and anyone who defies me is a traitor. The threat of genocide may not have been foreign policy. It was domestic policy.

Those who could take action but choose to do nothing

The 25th Amendment specifically names those responsible. Their silence has a name: complicity.

The Secretary of Defense. The Secretary of State. The Attorney General. The Secretary of the Treasury. They—and only they, along with the Vice President—are the ones who can invoke the 25th Amendment. Each of them hears the same rambling speeches. Each of them reads the same threats on Truth Social. Each of them knows what millions of Americans know.

And each of them remains silent. Not because they believe the president is fine. But because the political cost of speaking out is higher than the moral cost of remaining silent. Because their careers, their ambitions, their place in the Trumpist power ecosystem are worth—in their eyes—more than the constitutional responsibility entrusted to them.

Hannah Arendt had a word for this

It is not malice. It is worse. It is administrative obedience in the face of the unthinkable. It is the refusal to think, the refusal to see, the refusal to act when action is not only possible but constitutionally required. Ordinary men and women—not monsters—who choose the comfort of inaction in the face of a danger they privately acknowledge.

When historians write the chapter on this period—and they will—the names of those who could have invoked the 25th Amendment but did not will be inscribed in letters of fire. Not as active accomplices. But as something more mundane and more unforgivable: silent witnesses.

Even so, the strategy of chaos is no longer working

Threatening Iran may serve a geopolitical purpose. Insulting the pope serves no purpose at all.

At a stretch, one might rationalize the threat against Iran. It’s coercive diplomacy taken to the extreme, defenders will say. It’s Nixon on steroids, the more lenient will add. But the attack on Pope Francis has no strategic framework, no geopolitical justification, and no diplomatic precedent.

The pope is the head of a sovereign state—the Vatican. The pope is the spiritual leader of a quarter of humanity. The pope is respected even by those who do not share his faith. Insulting him publicly, calling him weak and incompetent in foreign policy, yields no measurable strategic benefit. It alienates American Catholics—a massive electoral base. It further isolates the United States on the international stage. It puts no pressure on anyone, solves nothing, and advances no cause.

What remains when you strip away the calculation

If this isn’t strategic, what is it? That’s the question even Trump’s most staunch defenders struggle to dodge. When behavior cannot be explained by strategy, ideology, or political interest, only two possible explanations remain: the gratuitous provocation of a man who has lost all sense of boundaries, or the visible symptom of a decline that no one in power wants to acknowledge.

In both cases, the result is the same: a U.S. president acting in a way that even his own allies describe as madness, in a time of war, with irreversible consequences for millions of people.

Trump’s America as Seen from Allied Capitals

When a French senator publicly calls the U.S. president a “dangerous madman,” diplomacy is already dead.

A French senator—not an activist, not a talk-show commentator, but an elected official of the Republic—called Trump a “dangerous madman” on camera for Brut Media. The fact that a political leader from a NATO ally would dare to use these words publicly speaks volumes about the state of transatlantic relations.

The United States’ traditional allies are no longer content to voice their concerns in private. They are publicly distancing themselves. And this distancing has tangible consequences: reduced intelligence sharing, complicated military coordination, and contingency plans that, for the first time, include the scenario of a hostile America rather than an ally.

The question Beijing and Moscow are silently asking themselves

The United States’ adversaries are making a different calculation. Is an unstable president more dangerous or more exploitable? The answer depends on the context. A Trump who threatens to destroy Iran is dangerous for everyone. But a Trump who insults the pope, alienates his allies, and divides his own camp is a strategic windfall for those who want to see the West weakened.

Xi Jinping doesn’t need to destabilize America. Trump is doing it for him. Putin doesn’t need to divide NATO. Trump is doing it for him. The irony is suffocating: the president who promised to make America great again is making it more isolated, more unpredictable, and more vulnerable than it has been in a century.

The words Peter Baker chooses weigh a ton each

When the New York Times’ chief White House correspondent—who is covering his sixth presidency—chooses these words, you have to read them twice.

Peter Baker is not a partisan commentator. He is a beat reporter who has covered six presidencies—from Clinton to Trump 2.0. A man whose craft is precision of language, measured phrasing, and respect for verifiable facts. When this man describes the president’s statements as “rambling, hard to follow, and at times obscene,” every word is weighed, verified, and legally defended.

“Rambling” means that the sentences do not flow logically. “Hard to follow” means that the train of thought is lost. “Sometimes obscene” means that the President of the United States uses language that The New York Times cannot reproduce in full.

Journalism as the Last Line of Defense

When political institutions refuse to act, when the administration remains silent, when the vice president looks the other way, only journalism remains to document, name, and alert the public. And only citizens remain to read, understand, and take action. American democracy currently hangs by a thread: the ability of a free press to say what elected officials dare not say, and the ability of the public to hear what those in power would like to silence.

Baker and the New York Times are not offering a medical diagnosis. They are doing something more fundamental: they are documenting reality. And the reality, in April 2026, is that a U.S. president in a time of war is behaving in a way that his own political allies describe as madness.

Between denial and disaster, there is only one nuclear code

The whole world knows. The administration knows. The vice president knows. And everyone is waiting for someone else to act first.

The problem is no longer the diagnosis. The diagnosis—whether medical, political, or simply empirical—is shared by former generals, diplomats, elected officials from his own party, commentators who have supported him for years, and foreign officials who have dealt with him in person. The problem is inaction.

America finds itself in a situation without an exact historical precedent: a president whose instability is recognized across the political spectrum—including by his own allies—but who remains protected by a political system designed for a time when partisan loyalty had limits and institutions still had the courage to function.

The Cost of Waiting

Every day of inaction is one more day that a man whom Marjorie Taylor Greene calls insane and whom Candace Owens describes as a genocidal lunatic retains control of the world’s leading military power. Every day is one more day that a threat of genocide could become an order. Every day is one more day that escalation with Iran could cross a point of no return.

And yet, the institutions wait. The cabinet waits. The vice president waits. Congress waits. Everyone waits for someone else to have the courage to act first. It’s the bystander effect applied to nuclear geopolitics—and it may be the most terrifying spectacle of modern democracy.

One man cannot destroy a democracy on his own

Trump is the symptom. The system that protects him is the disease.

It would be comforting to believe that the problem is limited to one man. That all it takes is to remove Trump—through the 25th Amendment, through resignation, through any mechanism—for American democracy to return to normal. But that would be a dangerous illusion.

The real problem is not that an unstable man holds the presidency. The real problem is that an entire system—political parties, institutions, the media, the electorate—has allowed this man to rise to power, retain it, and exercise it without any effective checks and balances, despite years of increasingly strident warnings.

What History Will Remember

History will not judge Trump alone. It will judge the Republicans who knew and remained silent. The cabinet members who had the constitutional power to act and did not. The voters who saw the signs and voted anyway. The media, which treated each new escalation as a reality TV episode rather than a democratic emergency.

April 2026 is not the moment Trump derailed. It is the moment when America chose to watch the derailment unfold in real time—and do nothing. That collective choice, that national paralysis, that failure to activate the constitutional mechanisms designed precisely for this scenario—that is what future generations will not understand. And that is what they will not forgive.

The final sentence that no one dares to write

When those who loved him most call him crazy—maybe it’s time to believe them.

Somewhere in a situation room, a briefing is underway. Military officials are presenting options. Targets are being identified. Missile trajectories are being calculated. And the man making the final decision—the man whose word is law when it comes to nuclear strikes, the man whose order cannot constitutionally be challenged by any general—is the very same man whom his former closest allies describe as insane, erratic, and whose mind “isn’t working very well anymore.”

This is the reality of April 2026. Not a dystopian fiction. Not a television series plot. The stark reality, documented by The New York Times, confirmed by the president’s own allies, and observable in real time by anyone with an internet connection and the willingness to look.

The question is no longer whether Trump is fit to hold office. The question is how long the world can survive the answer.

By Jacques PJ Provost