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Trump's mental decline is on vivid display as he rages about Epstein, windmills | Opinion
He went on lengthy diatribes about windmills. He ranted about the ungratefulness of starving children. He forayed into nonsensical conspiracy theories regarding the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Rex Huppke
USA TODAY
It was nice of Donald Trump to travel to Scotland and show our European allies firsthand that the United States is led by a self-absorbed and deeply weird man in obvious mental decline.
Over the span of a weekend, the U.S. president’s addled brain raced about like a dull-witted Labrador attempting to outsmart squirrels. He went on lengthy diatribes about windmills. He ranted about the ungratefulness of starving children. He forayed into nonsensical conspiracy theories regarding the Jeffrey Epstein scandal consuming his administration, while laughably saying upon arriving in Scotland on July 25: “I’m not focused on conspiracy theories.”
Trump's head, based on his overseas babbling, is 90% conspiracy theories and 10% brain cells. Coverage of Trump's Scotland trip doesn't show the extent of his rambling
The trip was largely a taxpayer-funded chance for the grifter in chief to promote his Scottish golf properties, which in the realm of “things Trump can do that no other president would ever get away with” barely registers as a blip. Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
It was also a chance for him to talk “deals” with the European Union and the United Kingdom, with a “deal” being something resulting in trade tariffs that will negatively impact American consumers.
Or as Trump likes to call it, “Winning.” Opinion: MAGA is realizing Trump lies. How can they trust anything he says on Epstein?
News coverage tends to trim Trump’s voluminous prattling into digestible sound bites that sound vaguely sane. But if we care about a president’s lack of mental acuity – and I’ve been told by many that we do – it’s worth sticking your head in the high-pressure stream of nonsense that shoots out every time Trump opens his face hole. Trump shows he's laser-focused on the scourge of windmills
On July 25, Trump deplaned in Scotland and immediately showed reporters he was armed with weapons-grade non sequiturs.
“This immigration is killing Europe,” he said, racistly. “And the other thing, stop the windmills killing the beauty of your countries.”
Two days later, he sat with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, who looked like she would love to be elsewhere, and uncorked this: “And the other thing I say to Europe, we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States, they’re killing us. They’re killing the beauty of our scenery, our valleys, our beautiful plains. And I’m not talking about airplanes, I’m talking about beautiful plains, beautiful areas of the United States, and you look up and you see windmills all over the place, it’s a horrible thing. It's the most expensive form of energy; it’s no good. They’re made in China, almost all of them. When they start to rust and rot in eight years, you can’t really turn them off, you can’t bury them, they won't let you. But the propellers, the props, because they’re a certain type of fiber that doesn’t go well with the land, that’s what they say. The environmentalists say you can’t bury them because the fiber doesn’t go well with the land; in other words, if you bury it, it will harm our soil. The whole thing is a con job.”
OK. That was a thing nobody asked for. It’s also filled with lies – wind isn’t the most expensive form of energy, and windmills last far longer than eight years. But who would expect honesty from someone rambling like that? Again with the windmills? Heck, just let the old man cook.
And Trump wasn’t done with windmills. On July 28, during his meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the president said: “It destroys the beauty of your fields, your plains, and your waterways, and look out there – there's no windmills. But if you look in another direction, you see windmills.”
Are the windmills in the room with us right now, Mr. President? Propose prosecuting Beyoncé? Check! Babble incoherently? Check!
Trump did take a break from talking crazy over the weekend to post something crazy on social media, writing July 26 that pop star Beyoncé should be prosecuted for a nonexistent $11 million payment from Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
So that happened. And it’s not ideal.
On July 27, alongside von der Leyen, Trump was asked how he feels about the images of starving children in Gaza, to which he said: “That whole place is a mess. The Gaza Strip, you know, was given many years ago, said that they could have peace. That didn’t work out too well. When Israel gave that up, whoever was the prime minister at the time, who I know, who it was, but it was not exactly a very clever thing to do. Because that was given so that they finally have peace, but it’s actually made the situation worse. But we’ll see what happens. I think Iran is acting up. We have a lot of people acting, we have Venezuela acting up in a different way. They continue to send people that we rebuff to our border. They continue to send drugs into our country, Venezuela. They’ve been very nasty.”
So when shown images of starving children in Gaza, Trump feels the place is a mess because an Israeli prime minister whose name he DEFINITELY knows but isn’t going to say gave up the Gaza Strip so there could be peace but that made things worse and Iran is acting up and, hey, let me tell you about Venezuela, which is about 7,000 miles away from Gaza. Get the The Right Track newsletter in your inbox.
Columnist Nicole Russell on conservative values, family and religion.
Delivery: Tue, Thu
Your Email Opinion: Trump is unpopular, polls show, and he's building an America most Americans hate Republicans would have impeached Biden if he talked like Trump
Had Joe Biden said something like that when he was president, Republicans would have either impeached him or ordered him locked in a room at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
It got worse when Trump was asked if Israel should be doing more to allow food into Gaza to help the aforementioned starving children. The president’s few remaining brain cells decided to focus on how ungrateful all those starving people are: “We gave $60 million two weeks ago, and nobody even acknowledged it, for food. It’s terrible, you know, you really at least want to have somebody say thank you. No other country gave anything; we gave $60 million two weeks ago for food for Gaza. Nobody acknowledged it, nobody talks about it. And it makes you feel a little bad when you do that, and you have other countries not giving anything, none of the European countries, by the way, nobody gave but us, and nobody said, ‘Gee, thank you very much,’ and it would be nice to have at least a thank you.”
During his meeting with Starmer, Trump apparently forgot he had been talking about the Gaza Strip the day before and said: “We do have to take care of the humanitarian needs on what they used to call the Gaza Strip. You don't hear that line too much anymore. You don't hear the Gaza Strip. But it is the Gaza Strip. Amazing.”
Yes. Amazing. Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. Trump can't stop talking about the scandal.
Trump’s mental dullness led him to keep talking about the Epstein scandal he wants everyone to stop talking about, effectively telling the world the Epstein stuff is “not a big thing,” but probably involves former Democratic President Bill Clinton and a former president of Harvard University and “hedge fund guys” and was probably made up by Democrats who probably put fake stuff in the Epstein files but then, I guess, didn’t use any damning information against Trump before the election.
He also gave a third explanation for why he stopped being friends with Epstein and said of the convicted sex offender’s notorious island: “I never had the privilege of going to his island.”
The privilege? Spoken like a man whose mind has turned to mush.
So nice of Trump to share his cognitive decline with the world.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/07/28/trump-rant-windmills-epstein-gaza-eu/85409338007/
He went on lengthy diatribes about windmills. He ranted about the ungratefulness of starving children. He forayed into nonsensical conspiracy theories regarding the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Rex HuppkeUSA TODAY
It was nice of Donald Trump to travel to Scotland and show our European allies firsthand that the United States is led by a self-absorbed and deeply weird man in obvious mental decline.
Over the span of a weekend, the U.S. president’s addled brain raced about like a dull-witted Labrador attempting to outsmart squirrels. He went on lengthy diatribes about windmills. He ranted about the ungratefulness of starving children. He forayed into nonsensical conspiracy theories regarding the Jeffrey Epstein scandal consuming his administration, while laughably saying upon arriving in Scotland on July 25: “I’m not focused on conspiracy theories.”
Trump's head, based on his overseas babbling, is 90% conspiracy theories and 10% brain cells. Coverage of Trump's Scotland trip doesn't show the extent of his rambling
The trip was largely a taxpayer-funded chance for the grifter in chief to promote his Scottish golf properties, which in the realm of “things Trump can do that no other president would ever get away with” barely registers as a blip. Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
It was also a chance for him to talk “deals” with the European Union and the United Kingdom, with a “deal” being something resulting in trade tariffs that will negatively impact American consumers.
Or as Trump likes to call it, “Winning.” Opinion: MAGA is realizing Trump lies. How can they trust anything he says on Epstein?
News coverage tends to trim Trump’s voluminous prattling into digestible sound bites that sound vaguely sane. But if we care about a president’s lack of mental acuity – and I’ve been told by many that we do – it’s worth sticking your head in the high-pressure stream of nonsense that shoots out every time Trump opens his face hole. Trump shows he's laser-focused on the scourge of windmills
On July 25, Trump deplaned in Scotland and immediately showed reporters he was armed with weapons-grade non sequiturs.
“This immigration is killing Europe,” he said, racistly. “And the other thing, stop the windmills killing the beauty of your countries.”
Two days later, he sat with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, who looked like she would love to be elsewhere, and uncorked this: “And the other thing I say to Europe, we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States, they’re killing us. They’re killing the beauty of our scenery, our valleys, our beautiful plains. And I’m not talking about airplanes, I’m talking about beautiful plains, beautiful areas of the United States, and you look up and you see windmills all over the place, it’s a horrible thing. It's the most expensive form of energy; it’s no good. They’re made in China, almost all of them. When they start to rust and rot in eight years, you can’t really turn them off, you can’t bury them, they won't let you. But the propellers, the props, because they’re a certain type of fiber that doesn’t go well with the land, that’s what they say. The environmentalists say you can’t bury them because the fiber doesn’t go well with the land; in other words, if you bury it, it will harm our soil. The whole thing is a con job.”
OK. That was a thing nobody asked for. It’s also filled with lies – wind isn’t the most expensive form of energy, and windmills last far longer than eight years. But who would expect honesty from someone rambling like that? Again with the windmills? Heck, just let the old man cook.
And Trump wasn’t done with windmills. On July 28, during his meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the president said: “It destroys the beauty of your fields, your plains, and your waterways, and look out there – there's no windmills. But if you look in another direction, you see windmills.”
Are the windmills in the room with us right now, Mr. President? Propose prosecuting Beyoncé? Check! Babble incoherently? Check!
Trump did take a break from talking crazy over the weekend to post something crazy on social media, writing July 26 that pop star Beyoncé should be prosecuted for a nonexistent $11 million payment from Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
So that happened. And it’s not ideal.
On July 27, alongside von der Leyen, Trump was asked how he feels about the images of starving children in Gaza, to which he said: “That whole place is a mess. The Gaza Strip, you know, was given many years ago, said that they could have peace. That didn’t work out too well. When Israel gave that up, whoever was the prime minister at the time, who I know, who it was, but it was not exactly a very clever thing to do. Because that was given so that they finally have peace, but it’s actually made the situation worse. But we’ll see what happens. I think Iran is acting up. We have a lot of people acting, we have Venezuela acting up in a different way. They continue to send people that we rebuff to our border. They continue to send drugs into our country, Venezuela. They’ve been very nasty.”
So when shown images of starving children in Gaza, Trump feels the place is a mess because an Israeli prime minister whose name he DEFINITELY knows but isn’t going to say gave up the Gaza Strip so there could be peace but that made things worse and Iran is acting up and, hey, let me tell you about Venezuela, which is about 7,000 miles away from Gaza. Get the The Right Track newsletter in your inbox.
Columnist Nicole Russell on conservative values, family and religion.
Delivery: Tue, Thu
Your Email Opinion: Trump is unpopular, polls show, and he's building an America most Americans hate Republicans would have impeached Biden if he talked like Trump
Had Joe Biden said something like that when he was president, Republicans would have either impeached him or ordered him locked in a room at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
It got worse when Trump was asked if Israel should be doing more to allow food into Gaza to help the aforementioned starving children. The president’s few remaining brain cells decided to focus on how ungrateful all those starving people are: “We gave $60 million two weeks ago, and nobody even acknowledged it, for food. It’s terrible, you know, you really at least want to have somebody say thank you. No other country gave anything; we gave $60 million two weeks ago for food for Gaza. Nobody acknowledged it, nobody talks about it. And it makes you feel a little bad when you do that, and you have other countries not giving anything, none of the European countries, by the way, nobody gave but us, and nobody said, ‘Gee, thank you very much,’ and it would be nice to have at least a thank you.”
During his meeting with Starmer, Trump apparently forgot he had been talking about the Gaza Strip the day before and said: “We do have to take care of the humanitarian needs on what they used to call the Gaza Strip. You don't hear that line too much anymore. You don't hear the Gaza Strip. But it is the Gaza Strip. Amazing.”
Yes. Amazing. Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. Trump can't stop talking about the scandal.
Trump’s mental dullness led him to keep talking about the Epstein scandal he wants everyone to stop talking about, effectively telling the world the Epstein stuff is “not a big thing,” but probably involves former Democratic President Bill Clinton and a former president of Harvard University and “hedge fund guys” and was probably made up by Democrats who probably put fake stuff in the Epstein files but then, I guess, didn’t use any damning information against Trump before the election.
He also gave a third explanation for why he stopped being friends with Epstein and said of the convicted sex offender’s notorious island: “I never had the privilege of going to his island.”
The privilege? Spoken like a man whose mind has turned to mush.
So nice of Trump to share his cognitive decline with the world.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/07/28/trump-rant-windmills-epstein-gaza-eu/85409338007/
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