Donald Trump, Bubble Boy

Donald Trump is delusional. We can argue about why he's delusional—dementia, drugs, a deep-seated psychosis that seems to run stronger by the day—but the fact that Trump lives in a completely irrational state, surrounded by a world that does not exist in this physical plane, is undisputed.

At the moment, Trump's fantasy realm and the world the rest of us are forced to share are in violent collision, most notably in Portland and Chicago.

It's not just a few Black women. They're "all over the place."

The idea that hordes of Black women—beautiful Black women—are crying out for Trump to save Chicago by invading it with the Texas National Guard is only marginally more unhinged than his concept of Portland as somewhere on the far side of Gehenna.

Where did Trump see that things were so bad in Portland? The same place he saw all those beautiful women begging him to send in the troops.

He saw it on television. That's how Trump knows that Chicago is a hellhole, Portland is on fire, and everyone is calling for salvation at the point of a gun.

Just one week ago, there was a moment when Trump appeared to come up for air, a point where he suffered a momentary brush with reality recorded by journalist Evan Watson.

Trump referenced a weekend conversation with Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, and he alluded to being told by Kotek that the reality in Portland is different from what's being portrayed to him.

"I spoke to the governor, she was very nice," Trump said. "But I said, 'Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what's happening? My people tell me different.' They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place...it looks like terrible."

Kotek said she told Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Saturday morning that troops are not needed, and she believes Trump does not have the authority to deploy the military to Portland.

Two days later, Trump angrily shrugged off that encounter with a reality that didn't match the feed he's consuming at all hours of the day. Speaking to military commanders, he dismissed Gov. Kotek's attempts to clear away the spiderwebs of delusion.

“I get a call from the liberal governor, ‘Sir, please don’t come in. We don’t need you.’ I said, ‘well, unless they’re playing false tapes. This looked like World War II. Your place is burning down,’” Trump said.

Somehow, the idea that he's seeing false tapes seems less likely to Trump than that a major American city is on fire and everyone there is just letting it burn. With each passing day, Trump has only reinforced his claims that Portland is a disaster, burning, broken, and uninhabitable.

Meanwhile, in the actual Portland, the only war going on is the battle to see who can raise the stakes on showing just how silly Trump's post-apocalyptic fairyland really is.

Perhaps even more deranged than Trump's dark view of American cities is his contention that, by sending the National Guard in to pick up trash in a park, he completely solved all violence in Washington, D.C, or was it Chicago? Trump can't seem to remember.

The President of the United States exists in a dream world, where he regularly declares things that are not just untrue, but ridiculous. This is patently obvious to the most casual observer … so long as that observer doesn't work for a billionaire-owned media outlet.

Every time — not just sometimes, but every time — Trump is asked the most basic question, he responds in a way that shows he no longer has any concept of the reality that the other 8.2 billion humans in this world are sharing.

What's clear is that Trump is a bubble boy; a zombie glued to a television screen that's feeding him an endless drip of everything but brains. Hypnotized by a media stream that feeds him images of himself as superhuman, his enemies as worms, and every move he makes as a God-endorsed stroke of brilliance, Trump can't turn away. Because he doesn't want to.

It's been clear, from long before he stepped on the political stage, that Trump is easily influenced by flattery.

[Former national security advisor H.R. McMaster] added of the Republican presidential nominee: “People know kind of how to push his buttons."

There's a reason why there are at least 23 former Fox News staffers in Trump's White House. Trump has always had disdain for intelligence officers, refuses to sit for briefings, and has never read his daily reports. All of that seems like work to Trump. Like studying for exams that he regularly flubbed in college.

But if there's anything Trump loves, it's watching conservative news networks praise him 24/7. He especially loves seeing how far those news outlets will go to make even his most trivial and foolish moments into something grand.

In Trump's world, those Fox hosts are both the voice of real America and the only experts he needs to consult. They're also his only real family.

There's something else that Trump likes: Fake images and videos created using AI to make him seem like a muscled-up tough guy.

Trump absolutely loves this shit. Whether it's an AI video of Gaza being turned into a Trump beach resort, the image Trump's campaign team posted of Trump as Pope, or AI videos mocking Democratic leaders, Trump eats this stuff up with an extra-large spoon.

What's on Trump's TV? Burning Portland, Black women beckoning him to invade Chicago, and an America in thrall to big, strong, brilliant Donald Trump. He's a bubble boy who never wants to leave his bubble.

Trump may be the one making the pubic scrawl at the bottom of executive orders, but America's real masters are the people who maintain Trump's feed. The people both inside and outside the White House who carefully tend Trump's bubble, keep it filled with technicolor boom-booms, and ensure that any pinpricks made by nasty old reality are swiftly mended.

Trump's mind is filled with nothing but juvenile propaganda. It's no wonder that's all that spills from his mouth.

But it's still shocking that major media outlets refuse to call him on it.