The president spewed absolute nonsense on Sunday. It should spark speculation about his mental capacity.
President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, on Sunday, May 4, 2025.(Chris Kleponis / CNP / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
On Sunday, President Donald Trump warned parents that Christmas might be tough this year, claimed that high stroller prices don’t matter, and said he doesn’t “know” if he has to uphold the Constitution.
“I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl needs—that’s 11 years old—needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls.… They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”
That was Trump’s pitch to NBC’s Kristen Welker on Meet the Press when she asked about prior comments that maybe girls will get fewer dolls for Christmas this year. And lest you thought he misspoke, and his staff would get him in line, on Air Force One that same day, he continued his War on Christmas, and on America’s little girls, telling reporters, “A young lady, 10-year-old girl, 9-year-old girl, 15-year-old girl, doesn’t need 37 dolls.”
Nobody wants to hear the serial sexual abuser and friend of the late predator Jeffrey Epstein talk about “a beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old” or “a 10-year-old girl, 9-year-old girl, 15-year-old girl,” as though he’s reminiscing about his time on Epstein’s notorious island. Ick factor aside, it’s amazing to hear the president tell America’s parents in May that come December they’ll have to ration their children’s toys. Or is he suggesting America’s little girls are spoiled and will grow up to be the insolent feminists hated by the manosphere?
You could argue, and many will, that the real news in Welker’s interview came when Trump said, “I don’t know” whether it’s his job to uphold the Constitution—although The New York Times put it on page 13—or whether everyone in the country, whether citizens or not, has a right to due process. The Supreme Court knows, and it has already said yes, although what it will do as Trump continues to flout its rulings is a huge unanswered question.
But Trump’s blithely acknowledging that ordinary Americans are going to feel the pinch of his tariffs is important too. Oh, also small businesses? Who cares?, he essentially told Welker. “Why do you always mention that?” he asked petulantly. “You know, you pick up a couple of little businesses. What about the car business? They’re going to make a fortune because of the tariffs.” I remember when Republicans claimed to be the party of small business, which was always a façade, anyway. But boasting that he cares more about auto titans than struggling entrepreneurs is just part of his second term’s blatant fronting for billionaires—and himself.
Meanwhile, there was plenty of reporting Sunday that the impact of tariffs can already be seen in the supply chain. Global trade expert Christopher Mims of The Wall Street Journal assembled some of the indicators—including declining shipping volume at major American ports—in a Bluesky thread.
Mims quoted supply chain “guru” Ryan Petersen predicting, “If they don’t change the tariffs, it’s going to be an extinction level, asteroid-destroying-the-dinosaurs kind of event,” wiping out thousands of businesses and millions of jobs.
Dolls and pencils will be the least of our worries.
I don’t want to rehash the question of whether Trump deserves a platform on Meet the Press or whether Welker did a good “job.” Her questions were decent, but as with most of her colleagues, her follow-ups were weak or nonexistent. To the question of whether Trump has to uphold the Constitution, she might have just read him his oath of office: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” He reserved the right to use military force to annex Greenland, a territory of NATO ally Denmark. What might that even mean?
Even without his NBC platform, Trump continued to spew similar nonsense the rest of the day traveling with reporters, and later on Truth Social. He made big news there, first calling to reopen the notorious Alcatraz prison island in the San Francisco Bay. Closed in the 1960s because it was too expensive to maintain, it is now a phenomenally successful museum. (Trump ought to visit it: The Alcatraz After Dark tour lets you lock yourself in solitary while they turn the lights out. It’s creepy even if you’re not a career criminal.)
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Finally, he announced that he’s going to place “100 percent” tariffs on films produced in “foreign lands” (100 percent of what is only one question). It had the stench of fascism, controlling the art Americans are exposed to; it also makes little sense, and could seriously hurt the American entertainment industry, which he sees as a pillar of the Democratic Party, so maybe that’s part of the point.
Why does he have a platform on the premier Sunday news show? Relatedly, why am I paying attention to this obviously unwell, possibly demented 79-year-old toddler? I don’t think he deserves a Sunday show, or prime-time news, platforming. He peddles his wares everywhere. There’s nothing exclusive, or newsworthy, about getting him to blather on. Why am I paying attention? Because I feel like I have to. It’s tempting to tune out the lunacy—many of my friends have—but a spectacle like Sunday’s could actually matter, eventually.
Taken together, Trump’s Sunday ramblings should spark more speculation about his mental capacity, a year after the media drove Biden out of his reelection campaign for many fewer transgressions. (Of , he should have taken himself out much earlier.) Trump’s deranged suggestion that parents should buy fewer dolls or pencils should become household knowledge, and it will if predicted supply chain and Chinese product shortages materialize.
Trump is destroying the economy he inherited. (Republicans are always reckless when they inherit a good economy from a Democrat—see George W. Bush, Trump, and then Trump.) His policies are manifesting on many cruel and chaotic levels. Yet, except for illegally renditioned immigrants, including some US citizens, and federal workers who’ve lost their jobs, most of us haven’t seen anything yet. And so we keep recording his dangerous inanities, hoping the documentation will make a difference someday soon.
Joan WalshTwitterJoan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.