Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was on Morning Joe on MS NOW today, where he discussed Donald Trump’s mental decline and his recent threat to kill the nearly 100 million people who live in Iran.

Buttigieg was talking about a social media post from Trump earlier this week that said, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” referring to Iran. He then used that incident to talk about how Trump’s mental decline has been something that was happening “gradually” since at least 2015, but, in his opinion, has accelerated recently.

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“Going bankrupt is something that happens gradually, then suddenly,” he said, quoting Ernest Hemingway. “This has been happening gradually, really, since the day he came down that escalator a decade ago.” He was referring to Trump announcing his first presidential campaign.

“Certain things are happening suddenly,” Butigieg continued. “For the leader of the free world, the leader of this country to just make a nakedly genocidal threat against another civilization, as if the United States of America was a death star that was going around blowing up civilizations. Of course, that crosses a new line; of course, that’s a new low.”

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“The effects of that kind of thing will outlive Donald Trump. Long after he has departed the scene, the collapse in trust, not just affection for the United States, but trust in the United States,” Buttigieg continued. “The whole country is being judged, even though most Americans don’t support him anyway. The whole country is being judged just for tolerating that kind of thing at the White House.”

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