Much attention has been paid to Donald Trump's claim that he would refuse to defend NATO allies he considers “delinquent” and has even said that he might encourage Russia to attack them.
Many of the conversations I have heard have focused on the political implications, on what it would mean for the United States to abandon its Treaty obligations and treat NATO as an object of extortion in exchange for protection.
These implications are important and alarming.
But, in my opinion, we have not paid enough attention to what exactly Trump said and what this indicates about his understanding of reality.
Honestly, I would love to spend this campaign just talking about politics;
the world of
analysis
geeks is my happy place.
But since much of the political establishment seems to have decided to make this election season an exercise in remote geriatric diagnosis by amateurs who focus on President Biden's age and appearance rather than his record, let's take a closer look at his rival.
Because Trump often gives the impression of living in his own reality.
I'm not talking about the fact that he lies a lot, which he does.
My reasoning is rather that he often seems unable to distinguish between self-aggrandizing fantasies and things that have actually happened.
Trump's rejection of NATO played out like this: He did not directly allege that we spend too much on defense while our allies spend too little, something that would have been debatable.
Instead, he told a story: "One of the presidents of a big country stood up and asked me, 'Well, sir, if we don't pay and Russia attacks us, will you protect us?'
And I answered him: 'Have you not paid?
Are you late?
...No, I wouldn't protect them.
In fact, I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever she wants.'”
Using the language of intelligence analysis, it is highly unlikely that this conversation or anything like it actually occurred.
But as CNN's Daniel Dale has pointed out, Trump is very fond of telling stories about big, strong men who come up to him with tears in their eyes and call him "sir."
There is almost never any corroborating evidence, and it is very likely that very few of these stories are accounts of actual conversations.
Likewise, it is highly unlikely that people like, say, Emmanuel Macron or Angela Merkel have ever addressed Trump as “sir.”
There is also little chance that a NATO leader would ask what would happen if his country did not “pay.”
European authorities know, although Trump does not, that NATO is an alliance, not a club that charges dues to its members.
By the way, although European nations have probably been spending too little on their own defense, many have risen to the challenge of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Specifically, Lithuania — which Trump pointed out as easy prey for Putin — has spent six times more on aid to Ukraine, measured as a percentage of GDP, than the United States.
What's going on here?
Either Trump is telling a particularly absurd lie or he is somewhat confused about past events.
It would not be the first time.
As I said, while we don't know for sure whether Trump's many "sir" stories are a figment of his imagination, we do know that, contrary to his claims, one source noted that there's no way police officers and court clerks were “crying” and apologizing to Trump at his Manhattan court appearance last spring.
Let's be clear what is at stake here.
Let's forget about the political analysis, the talk about public perceptions and how they can influence the 2024 horse race. What we should be focusing on is how the mental capacity of the candidates can affect their decision making.
It's curious that, despite all the fuss about Biden's age, I haven't seen many suggestions that he made bad decisions because his judgment is impaired;
almost everything is conjecture about the future.
Yes, he has made mistakes, although the two most criticized decisions—the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the overspending—seem justifiable in retrospect.
But these mistakes, if they were mistakes, were of the kind that any president, no matter how young and vigorous, could have made.
On the other hand, let's think about how Trump reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Republicans have had considerable success in making it appear that the Trump administration ended before the pandemic came to dominate the scene.
But it was not like that;
Covid killed more than 77,000 Americans in December 2020, Trump's last full month in office.
And as the pandemic spread, Trump responded, as
The Washington Post stated,
with “denialism, mismanagement and magical thinking.”
Basically, he was unwilling to acknowledge an uncomfortable reality and continually minimized the danger while he spread false remedies.
Remember all the times he said Covid would go away?
Remember the press conference about the “disinfectant”?
Remember hydroxychloroquine?
Oh, and in case you've forgotten, Trump still refuses to admit that he lost the 2020 election.
Unlike Biden's missteps, whatever you think they were, Trump's mishandling of Covid and denial of the election were typically Trumpian: the behavior of a man who doesn't like accept reality when it is not how he wants it to be.
And does anyone think he's improved in that regard in the last three years?
Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize winner in Economics.
© The New York Times, 2024. News Clips Translation
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