Either Evil or Idiot: Trump’s Sunday Morning Confession

Well, well, well. This past weekend, on what was once a respectable Sunday morning news magazine, Donald J. Trump—former President, current defendant, and full-time chaos merchant—looked straight into the camera and mused aloud whether he’s required to defend the Constitution of the United States.

Not whether he wants to. Not whether he thinks he has. But whether he’s required to.

Let’s pause right there. Because when someone asks out loud whether they’re required to uphold the Constitution—after having twice taken an oath to do precisely that—it’s not a question. It’s a signal. A signal that, yet again, Donald Trump wants to normalize lawlessness in a suit and tie. This is a man who stood on two separate occasions—once with his hand on the Bible, once just raising it—and swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. It’s a 35-word oath. He couldn’t even be bothered to remember the main verb.

And yet, millions still nod along like it’s fine. Like it’s somehow patriotic to treat the Constitution like it’s a rental agreement you can dispute in court if you don’t like the terms.

Now, I know the usual excuses. “Oh, he’s just trolling the media. He’s being provocative. He’s playing chess.” Maybe. Trump has always been a master manipulator, and he understands spectacle better than any other modern political figure. He knows how to inject disinformation into the bloodstream like Botox into a cable news anchor.

But let’s stop pretending there’s some profound strategy behind every toxic syllable. Either this man is purely cynical and malicious—openly undermining the rule of law while pretending to be its savior—or he is extremely, almost cosmically stupid, genuinely unable to grasp that the Constitution is not optional once you’ve sworn an oath to it, let alone twice.

There is no third option. There is no benign interpretation. No, “Oh, he didn’t mean it that way.” Yes, he did. That’s exactly the point.

If someone repeatedly vows to protect your house but keeps setting the drapes on fire, eventually you stop wondering about their intentions and start calling the fire department.

What Trump is doing—and what too many are enabling—is testing how far constitutional democracy can bend before it breaks. He’s not hiding it. He’s bragging about it on national television.

So let’s be clear: When you run for president, you’re not just applying to run the economy or play golf with foreign dignitaries. You are swearing—on record, in public—to defend the Constitution. That’s not symbolic. That’s not decorative. That is the job.

And if you’re unwilling—or worse, uncertain—about whether that’s required of you, then you are fundamentally unfit to hold that office. Again.