ANALYSIS/OPINION:

It must be summer re-run season on cable news and social media as prominent, Trump-hating journalists have returned to a common theme from earlier this year: “The president is mentally incapacitated and the 25th amendment must be invoked!”

The latest baseless, evidence-free attack on Trump’s mental capicity comes from Peter Wehner, a former Reagan/Bush White House figure who took to Twitter to challenge Trump’s sanity:

Mr. Trump was emotionally/psychologically unwell when he became president. His condition is clearly worsening. He’s becoming more volatile, erratic and unstable. At some point he’s going to blow apart. When he does it’ll create a crisis. This won’t end well. Pray for our country. — Peter Wehner (@Peter_Wehner) August 19, 2018

Almost immediately, (and as if they were working froma coordinated playbook) the reckless accusation was picked up and amplified by NBC’s Joe Scarborough and CNN’s Brian Stelter:

Anyone who has known Trump for years, and doesn’t have a stake in his political career or the GOP, says the same. He is unwell and has been getting progressively worse over the past 18 months. https://t.co/k1l3zAgwco — Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 19, 2018

If we were watching this unfold from some other country, we’d question the US president’s wellness. “Is the president okay?” pic.twitter.com/9XsHAC9L0f — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 20, 2018

Tens of thousands of retweets later, the weekend narrative was set: Trump was mentally unstable to begin with and every day he is in the White House is a dangerous day for America and the world.

You’ll remember this storyline in the media’s anti-Trump attack narrative from last year when Dr. Mika Brzezinski and her faithful intern Scarborough spent morning after morning pushing the storyline until it was picked up by Stelter and others who beat the 25th amendment drum on a regular basis.

Mollie Hemingway exposed the narrative as the bloodless coup that it was and after multiple showdowns at the daily White House press briefing, cable news moved on to chase the next “This will end Trump’s presidency” squirrel that caught their attention.

So, here they go again and we’ll see if this pasta sticks against the wall. The tweet-storm served the anti-Trump fever swamp for a solid 48-hour period and perhaps that’s all it was meant to do, but we’ve seen this episode before and there’s really no use binging on the entire series because we know how it turns out.

In fact, James Taranto from the Wall Street Journal pointed out that the whole fiction is based on an old Russian classic. Spoiler alert!

Trying to stigmatize political disagreement as mental illness is a classic Soviet move. https://t.co/SUAV9ktf6E — James Taranto (@jamestaranto) August 20, 2018

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