If Trump Is Too Unstable for the Situation Room, He’s Too Unstable for the Presidency
President Tump at the White House on Saturday. Photo: Allison Robbert/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
On April 3, an American F‑15 was shot down over Iran. Two US airmen were suddenly behind enemy lines, and the Pentagon launched a high‑risk rescue mission to get them home alive.
According to reporting based on senior administration officials, Donald Trump’s response was not steady leadership. He “screamed at aides for hours” after learning the pilots were missing, fixating on how the crisis might make him look like Jimmy Carter instead of focusing on the airmen’s survival.
It got so bad that his own military advisers and senior staff kept him out of the room where they were getting minute‑by‑minute updates on the rescue. Instead of having the commander‑in‑chief at the center of decision‑making, they briefed him only “at meaningful moments” because they believed his impatience and volatility would interfere with a life‑or‑death mission.
That is not a normal staffing choice. That is a vote of no confidence. If the people who see him up close, generals, national security aides, senior advisers, think the safest move is to treat the president as a problem to be managed during a single rescue, what does that say about his fitness to manage a war, a nuclear arsenal, or a constitutional crisis?
This isn’t just partisan critics talking. Members of Congress like Rep. Jamie Raskin are now calling for a formal cognitive exam, warning that Trump’s public outbursts over Iran have become “nonsensical, erratic, vulgar, unstable, and menacing.”
The Constitution anticipated the possibility of a president who is unable or unwilling to faithfully discharge the duties of the office. That’s why we have mechanisms for declaring a president “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and transferring authority. When the commander‑in‑chief is treated as a liability in a crisis, that’s not just a political problem. It’s exactly the kind of constitutional emergency those provisions were written for.
If Donald Trump is too unstable for the Situation Room when one American is in danger, why should we trust him with the presidency when all of us are?