This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, May 9th, 2017. I'm Caleb Brown.

Columnist George Will doesn't mince words. His words for President Trump are particularly sharp.

At the Cato Institute's 40th anniversary celebration, I spoke with Will about his thoughts

on the President and the presidency itself.

You had some particularly sharp words for President Trump this week.

What inspired that?

The accumulated cascade Niagara Vesuvius, call it what you will, of statements that he's made that are not just not true

but demonstrate a kind of alarming a ignorance of the American past and b

inability to think sequentially.

So, what, I guess what advice do you have to Americans who are observing this who think like you do?

I think Americans ought to be very sober, realistic, and calm but frightened, if that doesn't

sound like a contradiction.

They should understand that they have a president who, as I've said before

and will now say again for you, the problem with him isn't that he doesn't know this or that,

who's the Prime Minister of Bangladesh is? He can be told that.

The problem isn't that he doesn't know that he doesn't know this or that.

The problem is that it's not clear that he knows what it is to know something, what it means to have an

opinion and a judgment based on adequate evidence sustained by good reasoning, that he seems to be susceptible to trotting off

in all directions on the basis of whatever was whispered in his ear by the last person to whisper.

So there's a kind of inherent, probably incurable instability in the presidency right now, and will be for at least three and a half more years.

What has Congress's role been in enabling this thus far?

I don't think Congress has enabled it.

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