Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) thinks President Donald Trump is unwell and that people in his orbit are almost certainly taking advantage of it.
Asked what he thought about Trump’s repeated calls for the governor to be jailed while on Tuesday’s episode of “The Bulwark” podcast, Pritzker told pundit and “never Trump” Republican Tim Miller that he is genuinely concerned for the commander in chief’s well-being.
“This is not the way the president of the United States should be behaving,” he said, adding that he sincerely thinks Trump is contending with “mental health issues.”
Pritzker made clear that he wasn’t trying to joke about the situation and told Miller, “People need to help him, like his family.”
But the governor said he wouldn’t be surprised if some insiders at the Oval Office were exploiting that situation.
“I don’t think anybody around him on a day-to-day basis wants to get him any help because they have more power based upon his diminished capacity,” he said.
Pointing out one prime suspect, Pritzker said he believes White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is “clearly is the one pushing the tactics” behind the brutal anti-immigration offensive from the Department of Homeland Security, put into action by both its agencies, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
While Stephen Miller has been widely credited as the mind behind the most merciless parts of the administration’s deportation operations, Pritzker speculated that targeting migrants was just one piece of Miller’s broader autocratic agenda.
“He’s clearly the person that is aiming to have Donald Trump become an authoritarian leader,” the governor said. “And I wish that, you know, people could at least recognize that Stephen Miller is bad for the country, and he is abusing the fact that Donald Trump has diminished capacity.”
Catch Pritzker’s full conversation on “The Bullwark” below. His questions about the president’s health begin around the 12-minute mark.
