IS DONALD TRUMP OUT OF CONTROL?

Trump's actions raise serious questions about democratic norms and executive overreach.

- JOHN DOBSON LONDON

U.S. President Donald Trump

Last Monday, President Donald Trump gave a press conference in the White House in which he criticised the pain killer Tylenol, also known as Paracetamol, claiming without any evidence that pregnant women should avoid the drug due to an unproven link to autism.

Standing alongside his Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, whom many health experts consider to be somewhat deranged and detached from reality, Trump advised women to "fight like hell not to take it," unless for an extremely high fever. He also reiterated previous unfounded conspiracy theories related to vaccines. "Children get these massive vaccines like you give to a horse; they sometimes have 80 different vaccines in them, it's crazy," he said, echoing Kennedy, a well-known vaccine sceptic. Public health authorities around the world reacted in horror at Trump's weird and unfounded statements, worried that coming from a political leader they could undermine trust in medical guidance.

This press conference was just the latest example of Trump, who in just eight short months after being installed in the White House for the second time, is causing mayhem and confusion in America and around the world. In this instance it was just a case of misleading his followers into something that could harm children and mothers. Dangerous enough perhaps, but more serious is the unprecedented way he has expanded his powers and punished his critics more than any president since America's founding 250 years ago. Many consider American democracy, always fragile and imperfect, to be at a crisis point.