My old Observer problem page has a new home on Substack and some days I will browse the writings of others on the platform.

A current favourite is Heather Delaney Reese. She describes herself as a “family travel writer turned political truth teller” who aims to break down news and call out disinformation. So while I initially downloaded President Trump’s Truth Social to gawp at his outbursts, I found reading in real time challenging and decided to leave it to Heather to do the hard work. I’ll summarise her findings. 

Yesterday, she wrote that, while most of the country sleeps, Donald Trump stays awake for hours, posting compulsively, sometimes about 50 times a night, on Truth Social. 

The posts included conspiracies about Barack Obama and unnamed “underlings”. Images of himself as saviour (oh wait, “doctor”, my bad) as well as video clips designed to reassure and to dominate at the same time. In the middle of all this, he posts a clip of Frank Sinatra singing My Way with no explanation. The spark of hope I get from this is that because it is a popular song for funerals, he may be on his way out: “And now, the end is near … I did it my way”. Heather has another interpretation, because within hours of that one Trump gives an interview to Fox News journalist Trey Yingst and says, bluntly: “If they don’t sign the deal, then the whole country is going to get blown up.” So maybe the late-night posting of Frank Sinatra is not about his own end but the end of Iran. If he’s not thinking about his demise, it reads more like a threat. So much for a memento mori moment.

What Reese keeps returning to is the sense of a man without brakes. She draws on reporting saying that when a US aircraft was downed, Trump’s reaction was not centred on the missing personnel but on what the situation might mean for him politically, even invoking Jimmy Carter’s electoral loss. According to those accounts, aides limited his role in real-time decision-making because his volatility was seen as unhelpful. A president not trusted to sit in the room at the crucial moment – a bit mind-blowing. Thank God the aides are doing this. I hope they do it a whole lot more, because the Truth Social posts appear to me – and what do I know – to come from someone apparently deranged. Reese describes a ceasefire under strain, and a world trying to interpret signals from a stream of social media posts rather than from formal channels. Governments, journalists, observers, all watching the same feed and trying to work out what comes next. She mentions, as well, his attempts to silence sources of media hitherto thought of as balanced and factual, so only his version of himself and events is broadcast to the world. 

Politicians and presidents should be public servants, trying to make the world a better place for everyone now and, more importantly, for those coming after us. Reese contrasts that ideal with a man she believes is focused almost entirely on the present moment, on power and on personal survival.

The overall impression is not of chaos for its own sake so much as something more deliberate and more troubling: a narrowing of focus; a stripping-away of restraint; a sense that the rest of the world is left trying to read meaning into fragments posted in the middle of the night, hoping they add up to something that can still be understood.

And this is where I find myself uncomfortably close to the story rather than safely observing it.

Not the geopolitics, obviously. I’m not about to threaten a nation before breakfast. But the being awake when I shouldn’t be. I’m guilty of scrolling reels when I should be trying to go to sleep. Then I might just want to join in – there can be an impulse to put something out into the world at an hour when my mind is not exactly my best self.

There is something about the middle of the night that loosens things. There’s a loss of perspective and proportion. It’s probably why we tend to have parties at night. What feels like clarity at 2am can look like something else at 8am.

Most of us have the sense not to send the message, not to post the thought, not to buy the item and to leave the party before dawn. Oh God, I have bought some mad stuff in the middle of the night. No one needs a cafetiere warmer with a cat on it. There’s a reason draft folders exist. There’s a reason it’s often said: “Sleep on it.”

A good night’s sleep is a form of self-governance. It makes the world a safer place. When we are tired, we are terrible drivers, we become more certain and less wise, and the filter that says “maybe don’t” goes quiet, while the part that says “this is a very good idea” starts to shout.

When Reese describes a world trying to decode a six-hour overnight posting spree, I can’t help thinking, on a micro scale, how often we do something similar. We put something out into the world from a place of agitation, loneliness, anger or just plain tiredness, and think it will make us feel better. Most of us wake up to a slightly embarrassing email, an unnecessary argument and a cafetiere warmer we didn’t need. When someone in power does it, the stakes and consequences are different. However, the underlying mechanism is recognisable. Less sleep, less restraint, more impulse, more certainty.

Memento mori is about remembering we will die. But there is another practice which might be more useful day to day: remembering we will wake up. And in the morning, you will have to live with what your half-asleep self decided to do. Best, then, to let that self sleep. Night, night Donald. Put down the phone, there’s a good boy.

Philippa Perry is a psychotherapist, writer and broadcaster. Her Ask Philippa advice column is on Substack. Her debut novel Shrink Solves Murder will be published by Hutchinson Heinemann on 7 May.