Maroc - RAWSTORY.COM - Raw Story - 14/Aug 17:38

'Madmen lead the blind': Columnist suggests it's time to fit Trump with a straightjacket

A new editorial about Donald Trump's agitated response to Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign begins with a story about how "King Lear" landed mad King George III in a straightjacket. The Guardian columnist Sidney Blumenthal Wednesday relied on the classics to make his case that the Republican nominee is suffering a mental break, but peppered in some thoroughly modern jabs. "Apparently, Trump thinks tampon by association is an astute tactic," Blumenthal wrote of Trump's attacks on Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) for his debunked claim that Harris' running mate mandated menstrual products be placed in boys' bathrooms in schools."Scrounging around in the school toilets, he can only remind women of his lifetime of physical and verbal abuse, and that he claims credit for outlawing abortion rights. Trump is lost in the stalls. Grab ’em by the tampon."The story Blumenthal tells to explain Trump begins in 1788 with the British monarch picking up a copy of William Shakespeare's tormented tragedy and becoming "so ungovernable that recourse was had to the strait waistcoat," his attendant later recounted.ALSO READ: Harris has figured out Trump’s greatest liability"King George swooned reading King Lear," he writes. "Trump has become delirious at the sight of Kamala Harris."Blumenthal does not directly demand a straightjacket be delivered to Trump's Bedminster golf course ahead of the Republican nominee's upcoming press conference, he does hint Trump's campaign might find one handy."The king’s courtiers succeeded in restraining him, while Trump’s cannot control him," Blumenthal writes. "He rages, curses and shouts to the heavens of the unfairness of fate. His aides attempt to calm and steady him about Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race. 'It’s unfair that I beat him and now I have to beat her, too,' he cries."Trump's attempt to attack Harris and Walz, as described by Blumenthal, paint a portrait of the Republican nominee as a stumbling, slurring and hallucinating candidate. "He stumblingly flickers his projection of Biden...He mispronounces her name in a variety of deliberately mangled ways to make her seem strange....He can’t stop talking about the man who isn’t there," writes Blumenthal. "Since Trump can’t change, Harris must be an illusion."Trump's recent claim that Harris faked images of throngs of people rallying to her campaign events Blumenthal likens to a kingdomless Lear wandering the plains without any wits. "Lost in the illogic of his conspiracy theories he wanders back and forth from higher realms of incoherence to lower depths of innuendo," writes Blumenthal. But Blumenthal lets the Bard have the final word, quoting the play to conclude: "’Tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind."