'Doesn't know what year it is': Writer slams Trump for rants that are 'unmoored in time'

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's examination of recent Donald Trump speeches led him to believe the former president has become "unmoored in time."

A case in point, argued Krugman, was Trump's recent rant about the state of California being completely bereft of electricity.

Krugman notes that California did have an electricity crisis more than 20 years ago, but that was due to market manipulation by notoriously corrupt energy firm Enron — and not because of any state regulations.

"In Trump’s mind, apparently, that long-ago electricity crisis never ended," Krugman observed.

Krugman went on to show how Trump continues to talk about crime in New York as if it were still the 1970s when the city really was in dire straits.

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In reality, wrote Krugman, "New York’s transformation into one of the safest places in America has been especially spectacular: The city had 83 percent fewer murders last year than it did in 1990, and neither I nor my neighbors seem terrified about crossing the street to buy bread at my local bodega."

Taken together, Krugman argued, Trump's portrait of an America plummeting down a dystopian death spiral appears to be "a pastiche assembled from past episodes of dysfunction."

In conclusion, Krugman wondered "what would Trump say about an opponent who, like him, seems stuck in the past, who routinely describes America in ways that suggest that he doesn’t know what year it is?"