He’s mad. Mad to say it. Mad to think it’s appropriate. Mad for anyone to defend his words as if it’s a legitimate way for a world leader to behave. … 

Update – 4.8.26 – Of course he was bluffing. But who thinks President Trump’s words yesterday were at all appropriate? They were deranged — and even his most ardent backers know this.

Update II — 4.10.26 — From Fareed Zakaria at the NYT, re the president’s tweet to destroy Iranian civilization:

“It felt like that tweet was the culmination of something that had been going on for a while — which was that the president of the United States was simply abandoning the entire moral weight that the United States had brought to its world role ever since World War II.”