Also in The Times, Bret Stephens suggested a fix for that: “Mindless optimism is the only antidote I know to rational despair.” (Marjorie Pangas, Waukesha, Wisc., and Heide Estes, Brunswick, Me., among others)
In her newsletter, Mary Geddry rolled her eyes at one of the president’s favorite boasts: “Trump has been posting and ranting about the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, the MoCA, as though it is the SAT, the LSAT, the bar exam, the MENSA entrance test and the Sorting Hat all rolled into one. In his telling, passing a basic cognitive screening is proof of ‘extreme intelligence,’ because nothing says genius like repeatedly announcing that you successfully identified a camel and drew a clock.” (Steve Casey, Gig Harbor, Wash.)
Geddry separately noted that Trump’s reported abandonment of his $1.776 billion slush fund would hardly end his financial exploitation of the presidency: “The burglar may be abandoning the grand piano because it won’t fit through the window, but we should probably still check his pockets for the silverware.” (Nancy Turner, Stadl, Austria)
In Rolling Stone, Matt Bai imagined the long half life of Trump’s spoken calculations (“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation”) of the Iran War’s impact: “If A.I. server farms don’t overwhelm the nation’s electric grid, the number of Democratic ad-makers downloading that clip just might.” (Jocelyn Olcott, Durham, N.C.)
In The New Yorker, David Remnick used the current excitement over the New York Knicks to flash back to the team’s nonpareil roster in 1973: “It was a unit as exquisitely coordinated as a school of barracuda or the 1965 Miles Davis Quintet.” (Wendy Myers, Ottawa, Ontario, and Stan Shatenstein, Montreal)
