Trump Press Sec Goes Full Cult as Spin on Mental State Flies Off Rails

Under persistent questioning about President Trump’s unfitness for office at his latest Cabinet meeting, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt offered one of the ugliest defenses we’ve ever seen. She singled out Trump’s vile racist attack on Somalis, and praised it as an “epic moment” that put an “exclamation point” on that meeting “for the whole world to see.” Never mind that Trump appeared to fall asleep there, and in that rant about Somalis, called them “garbage” who “contribute nothing” and suggested he wants them all out of our country, even though many are American citizens. We talked to Vedant Patel, a former State Department and White House official. We discuss what it means that Leavitt went full cult in giving White House sanction to Trump’s ugly bigotry, why the targeting of Somalis is so ghoulish, and what Trump really intends when he threatens denaturalization and “remigration,” as he is now doing. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.