CNN host Michael Smerconish defended President Donald Trump against those calling for his removal from office via the 25th Amendment, arguing Trump’s critics don’t understand he plays the “madman card in public” to keep foreign enemies on their toes, when in reality he is making rational decisions behind closed doors. 

Smerconish made his case on the latest episode of his namesake show on Saturday.

He pointed to a big story in The New York Times last week from reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan that looked at the weeks leading up the the war in Iran, with Trump weighing input from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and cabinet members like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a more-skeptical Vice President JD Vance. 

The host said he believed the Trump administration wanted this story out there, because it was a nice “contrast” to Trump’s “offensive and intemperate” Truth Social posts where he warned Iran a “whole civilization will die” if it did not cut a deal with him by last Tuesday. Smerconish said Trump was merely talking tough on social media because that is what works in Middle East negotiations — not because he actually wanted to blow the country to smithereens. 

“This window into prewar decision making was for the Americans,” Smerconish said about the NYT report. “It shows airing of competing views, some open to dissent, reliance on legal counsel, and a deliberative process. Not the impulsivity with which Trump is so often associated. There’s nothing in the times behind closed doors account of an unstable Trump.” 

He continued, “At the same time that he was playing the madman card in public, you’d expect the guy that posts about a whole civilization dying would be simultaneously busting up the White House furniture. But there’s never been any reporting of Trump like that behind closed doors. In other words, it’s not that there’s a method to his madness, it’s that the madness is his method.”

He then disagreed with the dozens of Democratic lawmakers — and former Republican congresswoman-turned-Trump rival Marjorie Taylor Greene — who called for Trump to be removed from office. 

Smerconish said: 

The Haberman-Swan reporting ultimately reveals, much like what Bill Maher saw at dinner, is that Donald Trump is capable of exactly what his critics say he isn’t: patience, process and genuine deliberation.

He went around the table, he heard the dissent. He consulted the lawyers. He made a hard call under enormous pressure. And 90 minutes before his own deadline, a cease fire materialized. That’s not nothing.

And it’s certainly not the behavior of someone who needs the 25th amendment invoked or warrants impeaching. 

He ended the segment by offering Trump some “free advice” — to drop the “madman act” because the man sitting in the Oval Office is a “more formidable figure than the one rage-posting on Truth Social.” 

Watch above via CNN. 

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