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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
Donald Trump speaks from a podium during his campaign
rally
Brandon Bell / Getty
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
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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.
Recommended Reading

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pointing a fencing saber at another woman
Dear Therapist: My Sister-in-Law Said the Most
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Lori Gottlieb

An illustration of three kids playing with long ropes
around their waists
The Immense Pressure on Children to Behave as Tiny
Adults
Dara Horn
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computer while imagining a crowded sidewalk in front
of a taxi in front of a crowded bus in front of a
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The Psychological Benefits of Commuting to Work
Jerry Useem
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
unadorned truth about Trump, and treat him like any
other candidate for high office who is emotionally
and mentally unstable. A bias toward coherence is
understandable. But reality is what we must live with
long after the debates and rallies are over.

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