Trump goes from “I alone can fix it” to “I don’t know” on the most basic questions about his governance & policies

Trump used to boast that “I alone can fix it.” He’d say things like “I know more about [fill in the blank] than anybody.” (Trump has said he knows more about many things than anybody (video): construction, taxes, campaign finance, the environment, environmental impact statements, wind, Russia, the system, drones, debt, health care, courts, consultants, infrastructure, H1B and H2b visas, Isis, polls, renewables, “the power of Facebook,” and many other topics.)  As recently as five years ago, Trump was saying in his speeches that “I understand things. I comprehend very well, better than I think almost anybody.” He boasted that he was a “stable genius” and recently bragged in a Forbes interview that “I run the country and the world.” Trump has said he would be “the most transparent president, probably, in the history of this country”.

But now the most common answers Trump gives to questions about his governance are “I don’t know,” “I know nothing about it” and “You’ll have to ask [fill in the blank]” with answers like “the lawyers,” the head of Homeland Security, the head of Department of Human Services, etc.)

When a reporter asked Trump point-blank if, as President, he needs to uphold the Constitution, Trump answered “I don’t know,” even though he took an oath of office in front of the entire country that required him to do just that.  When a reporter asked him if his administration was deporting people to Libya (a move that would violate an existing court order), Trump answered “I don’t know.” When asked why he nominated Casey Means to be Surgeon General, he said “Because Bobby thought she was fantastic.” (Trump was unaware of her qualifications or lack thereof.  Means doesn’t even have an active medical license.)  When a reporter asked Trump about his Defense Department Secretary Pete Hegseth sharing classified information about a pending attack on the Houthis with a reporter on an insecure Signal chat, Trump responded that he didn’t know anything about it. When he was asked about the four U.S. soldiers who went missing in Lithuania in early April (and who were found dead soon after), he said he didn’t know anything about it. (The soldiers had been participating in a named conflict on foreign soil.) When NBC journalist Kristen Welker, host of Meet the Press, asked Trump point-blank in an interview whether everyone in the U.S. is entitled to due process (a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution to all persons present in the U.S.), Trump actually responded, “I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer” — an answer that stunned the country.

Only one of two things can be true about this situation:

Either Trump is flat-out lying to the public about what he doesn’t know to evade answering important questions about his governance, or he really does NOT know the answers to these questions because he is significantly more mentally diminished than he was a just few years ago.

Either way, the responses Trump been giving to very important questions about his governance and policies are inadequate and reveal that he is unprepared, ignorant about the goings-on in his own administration and unfit to be president.