There is a specific, pungent brand of irony that only the American political system can produce, a scent reminiscent of old formaldehyde and fresh grift. We have reached the point in our collective descent where Dr. Jonathan Reiner—the man responsible for maintaining the mechanical cardiovascular functions of Dick Cheney—has emerged from the crypts of the early 2000s to offer us a lecture on 'mental fitness.' It is a truly breathtaking display of audacity. Reiner, a man whose primary claim to fame is keeping the architect of the Iraq War's dark heart beating, now finds himself deeply concerned that Donald Trump might not be playing with a full deck. Welcome to the era of the 'expert' intervention, where the people who helped break the world now offer us diagnostic critiques of the people currently setting it on fire.

The catalyst for this latest bout of performative concern is a letter Trump sent to Norway’s Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre. According to Reiner, this missive was so detached from the standard boring pleasantries of international diplomacy that it should 'trigger a bipartisan congressional inquiry' into Trump’s cognitive state. One must appreciate the adorable naivety required to believe that a 'bipartisan congressional inquiry' is a tool of objective truth rather than a stage for a group of geriatric narcissists to shout at each other for the benefit of C-SPAN’s three remaining viewers. Reiner seems to believe that there is a standard of 'fitness' in Washington that is being violated, ignoring the fact that the entire capital is essentially a high-end hospice facility for the morally and intellectually bankrupt.

Let’s look at the players. On one side, we have the Trumpian aesthetic: a man who treats the English language like a jigsaw puzzle that has been run through a blender. His letter to Norway was likely the usual grab bag of grievances, self-aggrandizement, and non-sequiturs that have become his trademark. It is not 'news' that Trump writes like a man trying to explain a dream he had while under the influence of gas station sushi. To act shocked by it now is a form of selective amnesia that borders on the pathological. The Left will clutch their pearls, tweeting about the 25th Amendment as if they haven't been doing so since 2016, finding in Reiner a 'respected medical authority' simply because he is saying the thing they want to hear. It’s a symbiotic relationship of desperation.

On the other side, we have the Cheney-adjacent wing of the establishment, of which Reiner is a card-carrying member. These are the people who believe that as long as you commit your war crimes and economic pillaging with a steady hand and a grammatically correct memo, you are 'fit' for office. They pine for the days of 'decorum,' where the destruction of sovereign nations was handled by men with low resting heart rates and Ivy League degrees. To them, Trump isn't a problem because of his policies—many of which they quietly enjoy—but because he is loud, messy, and makes the machinery of the empire look as ridiculous as it actually is. They want their dignity back, not because they care about the truth, but because the current clown show is making it hard for them to maintain their delusions of grandeur.

And then there is the suggestion of an 'inquiry.' The idea that Congress—a body populated by individuals who frequently forget which state they represent and who spend 90% of their time begging for money from telecommunications lobbyists—is the appropriate venue to judge 'mental fitness' is the funniest joke told this century. Asking Congress to evaluate sanity is like asking a group of arsonists to provide an objective review of a fire extinguisher. It is a hall of mirrors where everyone is projecting their own decline onto their neighbors. If we started applying 'mental fitness' tests to everyone in the federal government, the city of Washington D.C. would be empty by Tuesday, save for a few confused interns and the rats in the basement of the Rayburn Building.

Ultimately, this is just another chapter in the endless, boring saga of American decay. A cardiologist who kept a warmonger alive is now diagnosing a reality TV star who became a cult leader, and we are all expected to treat this as a serious moment in our national discourse. It isn't. It’s a distraction from the fact that no one in power is actually competent, regardless of how many heart valves they have or how many letters they write to Norway. We are trapped in a loop of medicalized politics where the 'experts' and the 'populists' are just two different flavors of the same terminal mediocrity. Don’t expect a bipartisan inquiry to save you; they can’t even find the exit to the building without a donor holding their hand.